Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

Intel Compute Runtime 24.45 vs. AMD ROCm 6.3 vs. NVIDIA R565 Linux GPU Compute Benchmarks
Intel Compute Runtime 24.45 vs. AMD ROCm 6.3 vs. NVIDIA R565 Linux GPU Compute Benchmarks
9 Hours Ago - Display Drivers - 6 Comments

Complementing yesterday's fresh Linux gaming benchmarks of mid-range Intel Arc Graphics "Alchemist" vs. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 vs. AMD Radeon RX 7000 series cards ahead of the upcoming Battlemage availability, today's article is providing a fresh look at the latest Intel Compute Runtime performance for Level Zero / OpenCL on current-gen Intel discrete graphics compared to mid-range AMD Radeon GPUs on ROCm 6.3 and similar NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Ada graphics cards on the R565 driver.

New Linux Patch Establishes "CONFIG_X86_64_NATIVE" For -march=native Kernel Builds
New Linux Patch Establishes "CONFIG_X86_64_NATIVE" For -march=native Kernel Builds
10 December 11:00 AM EST - Linux Kernel - Optimized Kernel Builds - 8 Comments

Last week I wrote about Linux patches cleaning up x86 32-bit kernel builds for x86_64 CPUs. The new iteration of those patches were sent out today, including the addition of a patch adding the CONFIG_X86_64_NATIVE Kconfig tunable for enabling "-march=native" kernel builds to cater your optimized kernel compilation for the CPU on which you are building the kernel.

Updated Dasharo Firmware Pulls In Raptor Lake Instability Fix, Other Enhancements
Updated Dasharo Firmware Pulls In Raptor Lake Instability Fix, Other Enhancements
10 December 10:00 AM EST - Hardware - Dasharo - 4 Comments

For those wanting to run Coreboot or Coreboot-derived firmware on a modern desktop motherboard with good performance and features, the main contender currently is 3mdeb's Dasharo downstream that can be flashed on the MSI PRO Z790-P/Z790-P motherboards for using with Intel Core Alder Lake and Raptor Lake processors. Firmware consulting firm 3mdeb today published a new Dasharo firmware update for the MSI PRO Z790-P WIFI motherboard.

IBM Deprecating Linux Drivers For CXL Coherent Accelerators & CAPI Flash
IBM Deprecating Linux Drivers For CXL Coherent Accelerators & CAPI Flash
10 December 06:18 AM EST - Hardware - Deprecating - 7 Comments

IBM engineers announced they are deprecating the upstream CXL and CXLFLASH Linux kernel drivers with plans to then remove the drivers from the mainline kernel the following cycle. Before getting too worked up when seeing the "cxl: Deprecate driver" patch, this is about the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI) that predates the Compute Express Link.

NVIDIA Releases EGL-Wayland 1.1.17
NVIDIA Releases EGL-Wayland 1.1.17
10 December 05:53 AM EST - NVIDIA - EGL-Wayland 1.1.17 - 3 Comments

NVIDIA published EGL-Wayland 1.1.17 on Monday as the newest update to this Wayland EGL external platform library to provide client-side Wayland support to EGL atop the EGLDevice and EGLStream extensions.

9 December

NTSYNC Linux Patches Revived To Help Boost Steam Play Gaming Performance
NTSYNC Linux Patches Revived To Help Boost Steam Play Gaming Performance
9 December 03:15 PM EST - Linux Gaming - NTSYNC v6 - 35 Comments

Back in May for the Linux 6.10 kernel the initial bits of the NTSYNC driver was upstreamed for helping to emulate the Windows NT synchronization primitives so Windows games running under Wine/Proton (such as Valve's Steam Play) can enjoy a very nice performance boost. That NTSYNC code for Linux 6.10 wasn't yet in functioning shape and now a half-year later the newest NTSYNC patch series has been sent out for review.

NVIDIA R565 vs. Linux 6.13 + Mesa 25.0 Git AMD / Intel Graphics For Linux Gaming
NVIDIA R565 vs. Linux 6.13 + Mesa 25.0 Git AMD / Intel Graphics For Linux Gaming
9 December 12:12 PM EST - Linux Gaming - 39 Comments

It's been a few months since running any fresh Linux graphics driver comparison benchmarks. But given the imminent availability of the first Intel Arc Battlemage graphics cards, I have been carrying out some fresh Linux GPU driver testing. Given the recently-stabilized NVIDIA R565 Linux driver series and then also the newest upstream code in Linux 6.13 Git and Mesa 25.0-devel for the AMD Radeon and Intel Arc Graphics hardware on their open-source drivers, here is a fresh look at where Intel / AMD / NVIDIA mid-range graphics stand today on Ubuntu Linux with the leading-edge drivers.

Rust-Based, Memory-Safe PNG Decoders "Vastly Outperform" C-Based PNG Libraries
Rust-Based, Memory-Safe PNG Decoders "Vastly Outperform" C-Based PNG Libraries
9 December 09:05 AM EST - Programming - Rust-Based PNG Decoders Performance - 143 Comments

Video and image encoders/decoders written in the Rust programming language for its memory safety guarantees is often viewed as one of the compelling areas for the programming language to better protect against malformed/malicious content especially within web browsers. Not only are Rust-based PNG image decoders proving to be more secure than C-based decoders, but the performance of the Rust solutions can be even faster.

ASUS TUF GAMING X670E PLUS Seeing Linux Sensors Support
ASUS TUF GAMING X670E PLUS Seeing Linux Sensors Support
9 December 06:48 AM EST - AMD - ASUS X670E PLUS - 6 Comments

For those with the ASUS TUF GAMING X670E PLUS as a ~$230 USD AM5 motherboard for Ryzen 7000/9000 series processors, this desktop motherboard is seeing support tacked onto the asus-ec-sensors hardware monitoring driver so you can enjoy working sensor readings under Linux.

Glibc 2.41 Adds C23's sinpi / cospi / tanpi Functions
Glibc 2.41 Adds C23's sinpi / cospi / tanpi Functions
9 December 06:36 AM EST - GNU - GNU C Library 2.41 - 6 Comments

Ahead of the GNU C Library "glibc" 2.41 release due out around early February, more C23 features are being finished up. The latest crossing the finish line is support for C23's sinpi, cospi, and tanpi trigonometric functions.

Raspberry Pi 500 Launches Along With Raspberry Pi Monitor
Raspberry Pi 500 Launches Along With Raspberry Pi Monitor
9 December 05:51 AM EST - Raspberry Pi - Raspberry Pi 500 - 33 Comments

Launched four years ago was the Raspberry Pi 400 as the Raspberry Pi 4 adapted for a keyboard form factor. Launching today is the Raspberry Pi 500 for upgrading that keyboard computer using the Raspberry Pi 5 internals. An official Raspberry Pi Monitor was also released.

8 December

Ubuntu flash-kernel Package Looks To Drop Support For Old ARM Hardware
Ubuntu flash-kernel Package Looks To Drop Support For Old ARM Hardware
8 December 06:51 AM EST - Ubuntu - flash-kernel - 4 Comments

The flash-kernel package is used for putting the Linux kernel image and initramfs in the boot location for embedded devices that aren't able to boot directly from /boot. The flash-kernel package is particularly important for older ARM hardware while now Ubuntu maintainers are looking at dropping patches they currently carry for a number of aging ARM platforms.

7 December

More Kernel Bitrot: Old & Busted UltraSPARC T2 "Niagara 2" SPU Driver Slated For Removal
7 December 04:09 PM EST - Linux Kernel - Sun Niagara 2 Days... - 25 Comments

Following 107k lines of old driver code within the staging area of the kernel removed for Linux 6.13, over in the crypto space they are looking at some cleaning as well with plans raised to remove the Stream Processing Unit (SPU) driver for the old Sun Niagara 2, the Sun UltraSPARC T2 and this SPU was also found in the UltraSPARC T3 as well.

UMD Direct Submission "Proof Of Concept" For The Intel Xe Linux Driver
7 December 06:58 AM EST - Intel - User-Space Direct Submission - 6 Comments

One of the interesting Intel Xe Linux kernel graphics driver patches that was volleyed for discussion last month is working on user-mode driver (UMD) direct submission support for allowing work to be directly submitted from user-space to the GPU hardware and avoiding some of the overhead of the kernel driver interactions.

AMD Hardware Feedback Interface "HFI" Patches Updated For The Linux Kernel
7 December 06:31 AM EST - AMD - AMD HFI v7 For Linux - 2 Comments

While there are many great new features in Linux 6.13 like the AMD 3D V-Cache Optimizer driver, one of the features that wasn't buttoned up in time for this current kernel cycle were the patches implementing the AMD Hardware Feedback Interface (HFI). But that work remains ongoing and last week brought the seventh iteration of the patches.

6 December

OBS Studio 31.0 Released With New Features For Screen Recording & Screencasting
6 December 08:32 PM EST - Multimedia - OBS Studio 31.0 - 12 Comments

OBS Studio 31.0 was released this evening as the newest feature update to this open-source, cross-platform software for live streaming and desktop screen recording purposes. OBS Studio remains a leading choice across operating systems for screen recording, game livestreaming, and similar purposes while the new v31.0 release tacks on even more features.

MGLRU Sees New Performance Optimizations For Linux
6 December 06:19 AM EST - Linux Kernel - Multi-Gen LRU - 1 Comment

It's been a while since there have been any new advancements or performance optimizations to talk about for Multi-Gen LRU (MGLRU) that was upstreamed to the Linux kernel two years ago as a very exciting kernel innovation. But that's changing now with some fresh performance optimizations being worked on for the MGLRU code.

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