Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

Back in June it was teased that Framework Computer in collaboration with DeepComputing would be releasing a RISC-V motherboard for the Framework Laptop 13. That RISC-V laptop motherboard has yet to be officially released but Linux kernel patches were posted today for enabling the DeviceTree support so Linux can boot on this upcoming board.

The Servo open-source browser layout engine has supported making use of the Firefox Devtools code for the provided web developer tools such as the HTML web page inspector and browser console. But that support had fallen into disrepair. Fortunately, thanks to a useful Outreachy project, the code has been updated and now working nicely with the newer Devtools code.

Following Vulkan Video H.264/H.265 video encoder support being merged into the FFmpeg library, the latest improvement for this open-source multimedia API when leveraging Vulkan is implicit DRM synchronization.

In between Linus Torvalds' busy week being in Vienna for the Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit and related Linux Foundation events as well as managing the Linux 6.12 merge window with landing new features like sched_ext and real-time PREEMPT_RT, he also managed to finish up some of his own code for this next kernel version. Being merged today is his own code working on a new user access fast validation path using address masking.

The perf tooling changes were merged today for the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel. Notable on the perf tools side is supporting some features found in newer Intel processors.

Bcachefs lead developer Kent Overstreet has submitted all of the Bcachefs file-system feature patches for the Linux 6.12 kernel merge window. In his pull request he also lays out his ambitions to remove the "EXPERIMENTAL" flag from Bcachefs within the next year.

The PCI changes for the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel add support for Native PCIe Enclosure Management "NPEM" as a code contribution by Intel for implementing the PCIe spec to standardize storage LEDs.

Microsoft's Windows Dev Kit 2023 also known as "Project Volterra" was an early effor to improve the Windows on ARM support by developers via having a nice small form factor ARM PC to run Windows 11. With pending DeviceTree patches there would be mainline support for the Windows Dev Kit 2023 under Linux.

The kernel patches collected by Andrew Morton were upstreamed today for the Linux 6.12 kernel. Among those changes are pulling in the updated XZ Embedded code.

Linux 6.12 is shaping up to be a heck of a kernel update! Following real-time "PREEMPT_RT" going mainline after twenty years and many other kernel features merged this week, Linus Torvalds just pulled in the much anticipated sched_ext code!

While there sadly the previously-annual Phoronix meet-up at Oktoberfest in Munich remains defunct, in honor of Oktoberfest 2024 kicking off this weekend in Munich, it's time for the annual Phoronix Premium special. With the Oktoberfest sale you can go ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode support, and other benefits while supporting the site and enjoying a discounted rate.

While not as exciting as some of the shiny new features for Linux 6.12 like real-time going mainline and Lunar Lake and Battlemage graphics by default, the Firewire (IEEE-1394) subsystem has seen some significant alterations this cycle. With Firewire hardware increasingly rare, the maintainer is hoping to get this Linux 6.12 code better tested by the community.

Linux 6.12 yesterday merged the real-time "PREEMPT_RT" patches that had been in development for two decades. Today another big hitting feature was merged for Linux 6.12 that's been in development nearly as long.

The SDL abstraction library commonly used by cross-platform games now prefers using Vulkan on Windows as its ideal graphics API. Direct3D 12 has been demoted lower in priority compared to Vulkan for this Simple DirectMedia Layer.

KDE developers have been busy preparing for Plasma 6.2 with lots of bug fixing and polishing while also beginning to land some features for Plasma 6.3.

Oracle has shifted their Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel to a Linux 6.10 base with UEK-next.

Following the AMD ROCm 6.2 release from early August, ROCm 6.2.1 was released on Friday evening as the first point release to that series for this AMD GPU compute stack for Linux systems.

Wine 9.18 is out today as the newest bi-weekly development release for this open-source software that enables running Windows games and applications under Linux and other platforms.

The beta release of Ubuntu 24.10 "Oracular Oriole" was released in time for some weekend testing.

For months there has been talk and speculations around Raspberry Pi working to release a Compute Module 5 (CM5) in putting the power of last year's Raspberry Pi 5 into the small form factor for various embedded/industrial applications. It's pretty much a given that the Compute Module 5 will come, it's just a matter of when. With recent activity by Canonical engineers working on Ubuntu Linux, it's looking like the CM5 could be here soon.

The HID subsystem updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel. Notable this time around are some new feature additions for the popular Wacom drawing tablet support.

Most Linux distributions have been defaulting to MariaDB as the default MySQL server for years. Ubuntu though has been a notable outlier still relying on Oracle MySQL for the default MySQL service. A proposal raised by an Ubuntu developer hopes to change that for Ubuntu 25.04 in the new year.

After seven months under review, Google's Gfxstream code has been upstreamed into Mesa 24.3 as a Vulkan virtualization solution.

The OpenZFS project has merged DirectIO (O_DIRECT) support for the ZFS file-system to bypass the ARC for reads and writes.

The Haiku open-source operating project known for letting the BeOS spirit live on is out with their newest monthly progress report.

Following the other recent work around Linux enablement for Snapdragon X1 powered laptops, yesterday patches were posted for getting the X1 Elite powered Dell XPS 9345 working with Linux but not all functionality is currently working.

After many years in the making, it finally was merged overnight... The real-time "PREEMPT_RT" kernel support was merged a few hours ago into Linux Git for this year's Linux 6.12 kernel!

Well this is a hell of a surprise... Microsoft announced today that DirectX will be adopting SPIR-V as the interchange format of the future. Microsoft's DirectX 12 will accept shaders compiled to SPIR-V, the intermediate representation defined by The Khronos Group and commonly associated with Vulkan / OpenGL / OpenCL drivers.

After several weeks of testing Valve has released Proton 9.0-3 as the newest version of this Wine downstream that powers Steam Play for being able to enjoy Windows games on Linux.

Oliver Smith as the Interim Engineering Director for Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical is out with a new status update on Ubuntu 24.10 development and related ambitions. This also includes more details about bringing the KDE Plasma desktop to Ubuntu Core Desktop in Snap form.

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display driver updates have been submitted and already merged for the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel.

The core perf subsystem updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel.

Intel engineers today released OpenVINO 2024.4 as the newest version of their open-source AI toolkit. OpenVINO 2024.4 prepares for upcoming Intel Core Ultra Series 2 "Lunar Lake" processors, supports newer Gen AI models, now supports Python 3.12, and finally adds official support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.

The scheduler updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.12 kernel and come with several notable enhancements.

The Microsoft Hyper-V updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.12 kernel. They are mostly small changes but does bring work to optimize the boot time for large Hyper-V VMs.

The XFS file-system changes have been merged for the Linux 6.12 kernel and introduce new ioctls for being able to exchange the contents of two files.

For anyone still relying upon virtual reality (VR) applications written for the OpenGL API rather than the Vulkan API that has been dominant among VR apps (and other modern games / software) for years, the Mesa code and in particular the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver now supports the OpenGL VR (OVR) extensions.

An interesting merge request opened this week and already merged for Mesa 24.3 comes from an Autodesk engineer adding Vulkan Windowing System Integration (WSI) around Apple's Metal API for use on macOS.

The FFmpeg multimedia library continues to enhance its support around the Vulkan Video APIs with the latest commits seeing H.264 and H.265/HEVC Vulkan encode support merged.

GNOME 47 is out today as the latest major update to this popular open-source desktop environment.

Not to be confused with the proposal a few days ago by an AMD engineer for Attack Vector Controls for broader control over CPU security mitigation handling, the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel is adding new Kconfig options to allow for more build-time control over what CPU security mitigation code is compiled for the kernel.

The big set of power management updates for Linux 6.12 have landed.

Intel Compute Runtime 24.35.30872.22 released today as the newest tagged version of this open-source GPU compute stack providing oneAPI Level Zero and OpenCL support for Linux and Windows systems.

Merged as part of the Linux Security Modules (LSM) updates for the Linux 6.12 kernel is the new Integrity Policy Enforcement (IPE) module that has been years in the making. Integrity Policy Enforcement is an alternative to access controls.

The Btrfs file-system continues marching ahead with the Linux 6.12 kernel.