Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

LXQt 1.3 was just released as the newest version of this lightweight Qt-based desktop environment.

Being worked on for a while has been Linux kernel patches to speed boot times by allowing the parallel bring-up of CPU cores. There were AMD boot issues since worked around and the patches gone through multiple revisions for helping with Linux kernel boot times. Those patches continue to be improved upon and yesterday saw a reworked patch series posted.

OpenZFS 2.1.10 is out as the latest update to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation currently supported on Linux and FreeBSD systems.

The HP Elite 8200 was once popular and very common among workplaces and can still be found used/refurbished for a little more than $100 for this small form factor PC. Libreboot has now added support for the HP Elite 8200 as its newest desktop port for this Intel Sandy Bridge era system.

Following this week's Mesa 23.1 feature freeze and code branching, Eric Engestrom on Friday night published Mesa 23.1-rc1.

Plasma 6.0 development continues happening at full-speed and exciting this week were landing of some improvements around KWin's multi-GPU infrastructure to benefit Intel and AMD Radeon graphics.

Wine 8.6 is out as the newest bi-weekly development release of this open-source software to enjoy Windows games and applications on Linux and other platforms.

If you have been running a Linux 6.3-based kernel or later Linux 6.2 point release and have encountered your HDMI audio breaking when making use of Intel Arc Graphics A750/A770 hardware, a fix is on the way.

Open-source fans, rejoice, the most exciting thing I have read all week or perhaps the month: "AMD is committed to open-source software and is now expanding into the various firmware domains with the re-architecture of its x86 AGESA FW stack - designed with UEFI as the host firmware that prevented scaling, to other host firmware solutions such as coreboot, oreboot, FortiBIOS, Project Mu and others. A newer, open architecture that potentially allows for reduced attack surface, and perceivably infinite scalability is now available as a Proof-of-Concept, within the open-source community for evaluation, called the AMD openSIL – Open-Source Silicon Initialization Library."

There is two weeks to go until the Linux 6.3 stable kernel is released, which could drag out to three weeks if last minute issues come about in the kernel. But given all the material queuing via the many "-next" code branches, we already have a good idea for many of the features in store for Linux 6.4.

Landing today in Mesa 23.2-devel is support for big.LITTLE CPU detection or more broadly hybrid CPU core detection where little cores (e.g. E cores) are defined as having less than 50% the capacity of the largest CPU core on the system. This is done since Mesa's OpenGL threading is now being disabled for small hybrid processors.

Mesa 23.1 enables RadeonSI Rusticl support while for next quarter's Mesa 23.2, which just started development, there is already a big ticket item for Rusticl: Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) support.

AMD's Sensor Fusion Hub (SFH) driver with the upcoming Linux 6.4 cycle is being extended to support new Ambient Color Sensor "ACS" functionality.

The much anticipated Fedora 38 is cleared for releasing on Tuesday. There are no delays with the Fedora 38 cycle and in fact hitting their "early target date" for shipping on 18 April.

As part of Intel's ongoing Linux support preparations for next year's Sierra Forest processors that will feature up to 144 Xeon E cores per socket, the Error Detection And Correction (EDAC) driver support is set to be added for the upcoming Linux 6.4 kernel cycle.

Libreboot is the downstream of Coreboot focused on having fully open-source / free software replacements to proprietary BIOS/firmware on x86 and ARM systems. Out today is Libreboot 20230413 as the latest step forward for the project.

The Mesa 23.1 graphics driver code is now branched that marks an end to this quarter's feature development. Mesa 23.2-devel is now open on Git main in beginning work towards the Q3'2023 open-source user-space graphics driver stack feature release.

Canonical announced today that their kernel livepatching service will now be available for their hardware enablement "HWE" kernels on Ubuntu Long-Term Support releases.

For those with a Lenovo Yoga 2-in-1/convertible laptop, a tablet mode switch driver is set to be merged for Linux 6.4 to properly handle the tablet mode switching support for these devices while running the mainline Linux kernel.

Days after releasing the Intel Media Driver 2023Q1, Intel's software engineers have now released oneVPL 2023Q1 as the updated quarterly release to this video processing library that is part of Intel's open-source oneAPI toolkit.

Servo as the browser engine started at Mozilla but now developed as a Linux Foundation project has been maintaining two separate layout engines and moving forward they hope to be able to focus on the newer "Layout 2020" engine and fill in its missing gaps.

While we are still waiting for the Intel Xe kernel driver to be upstreamed as the modern alternative to the long-used i915 Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver, upstream Mesa Git is nearly ready in supporting the Xe kernel driver and its new/changed interfaces.

In addition to releasing the GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card today (unfortunately, no launch day Linux review, still waiting on hardware...), NVIDIA has released as open-source the RTX Remix software for helping to add path tracing support to classic games.

Intel Foundry Services (IFS) has racked up a big win today with Arm over enabling chip designers to make use of Intel's upcoming 18A process for low-power Arm SoCs.

If Mesa 23.1 couldn't get anymore exciting with RADV GPL support enabled by default, more RDNA3 optimizations, continued Zink optimizations, more Intel DG2/Alchemist enhancements, and a load of other features... Support for RadeonSI with the Rusticl Rust-written OpenCL driver has been merged!

The mainline Linux 6.4 kernel is set to see a new touchscreen driver for supporting the Novatek NVT-ts, which is used by at least a once popular Intel Atom powered Android tablet from a decade prior.

KDE Connect is the great software that allows for interfacing between the KDE desktop and your various mobile devices running Android, Plasma Mobile, Apple iOS, or even Sailfish OS. KDE Connect allows easily sharing files and data with your mobile device(s), receiving phone notifications on your desktop, and a lot of other remote/cross-device functionality. The KDE Connect 2.0 initiative that is taking shape this year thanks to full-time development work is going to modernize this open-source solution.

A new Intel graphics kernel driver patch posted by Intel on Tuesday confirm that upcoming Meteor Lake processors will feature an ADM/L4 cache.

CoreCtrl as the open-source utility for managing your system's performance/vitals and supporting various application profiles has landed in Debian as well as being picked up for easy installation on the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04.

Nginx 1.24 is now available as the newest stable version of this open-source web server and revrse proxy, load balancer, and HTTP caching solution.

With Firefox 112 now released, Mozilla has promoted Firefox 113 to beta.

Intel processors should have any CPU microcode updates loaded early during the Linux boot process to avoid various known issues. When "late loading" CPU microcode after the system is up and running, various issues can happen on Intel processors that led them to mark the Linux kernel as tainted under such conditions. Tainting the kernel also happened when late-loading microcode on AMD CPUs but now that's been deemed unnecessary and late-loading CPU microcode on AMD processors is reportedly safe.

For those making use of Mesa's single-file on-disk shader cache, with the upcoming Mesa 23.1 release there will be increased space savings with the Radeon Vulkan (RADV) driver.

Going back to 2020 Intel's open-source engineers have been working on Key Locker support for Linux for that hardware feature introduced with Tigerlake CPUs. The Key Locker Linux support has been worked on now for nearly three years and finally after a hiatus a new version was sent out after they worked through a significant performance issue now being addressed with forthcoming firmware.

AMD and their partners continue working on bringing up Coreboot for the Ryzen Mobile 7040 Series "Phoenix" support for those very interesting forthcoming mobile processors with Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA3 graphics.

For more than one year and now up to thirteen rounds of patch review, the AMD Pensando Elba SoC support continues in its trek toward the mainline Linux kernel.

The CentOS Project has sent out a reminder of end-of-life dates for CentOS Linux 7 and CentOS Stream 8.

Following some minor delays due to additional release candidates, FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE is now officially available as this latest FreeBSD operating system update ahead of FreeBSD 14.0 debuting this summer.

Alyssa Rosenzweig who has been leading the Panfrost open-source Arm Mali graphics driver reverse engineering effort the past half-decade is stepping down as maintainer of this driver as part of this also being her last day at Collabora.

NVIDIA launched their SHIELD "Thunderstrike" gaming controller back in 2017 and now in 2023 they are working to upstream their HD driver support for it.

Back in 2021 saw work on CPU cluster-aware scheduling by HiSilicon engineers for Arm processors as well as Intel engineers with a focus on their Jacobsville platform being comprised of clusters of Atom cores. That x86 cluster-aware scheduling was enabled for capable Intel processors while now two years later is being extended for AMD processors.

Just before Christmas Meson 1.0 was released for this widely-used, open-source software build system. Out today is Meson 1.1 as the newest feature update.

Mozilla has published the Firefox 112.0 binaries today ahead of tomorrow's official unveiling.

Theo de Raadt has released OpenBSD 7.3 today as the 54th release for this BSD operating system project.

Intel has released oneAPI Level Zero Loader 1.10 today, which implements the Level Zero v1.6 specification.

In time for the upcoming Mesa 23.1 branching and feature freeze, Samuel Pitoiset of Valve's Linux graphics driver team has enabled the graphics pipeline library "GPL" support by default with the Radeon RADV Vulkan driver.

While AMD Zen 4 "Dragon Range" and "Phoenix" laptops are imminent, for those using an older AMD Picasso laptop design from 2019, there are some new Linux fixes on the way for enhancing that older Zen+ experience.

The Intel Media Driver 2023Q1 has been published as the newest feature release for Intel's open-source video acceleration driver providing VA-API support across generations of their integrated graphics as well as newer discrete graphics.

Longtime X.Org release wrangler Alan Coopersmith at Oracle spent some of his Easter working out new releases of seldom-touched X.Org graphics/display drivers.