Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

Following the SLOB allocator removal earlier this year, the Linux 6.8 kernel in the new year is now positioned to remove the SLAB allocator. Additionally, the lone good-for-everything SLUB allocator is set to receive further optimizations.

GNOME Shell has merged a set of 35 patches to fix/improve icon and text scaling support, especially when using the Large Text mode for accessibility.

Here are some benchmarks looking at the performance uplift in migrating from Fedora Workstation 38 to Fedora Workstation 39 on an AMD Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" series laptop.

The AI Alliance has launched as a consortium focused on advancing open, safe, and responsible AI.

TornadoVM 1.0 has been released as the open-source software providing an OpenJDK and GraalVM plug-in for allowing Java on heterogeneous hardware from multi-core CPUs to GPUs and FPGAs. TornadoVM allows targeting OpenCL, NVIDIA PTX, and SPIR-V devices for a rather robust array of hardware support.

Published originally back in October were a set of patches for allowing different compression algorithms for the Linux hibernation image to yield faster restore times. That work -- focused on LZ4 compression support -- has been revised as it works toward the mainline kernel.

Intel's CPU temperature driver "coretemp" within the Linux kernel is being adapted so it can report CPU core temperatures in excess of 128 cores.

If the likes of the Steam Deck or ASUS ROG Ally are out of your budget or you just prefer enjoying more classic, less demanding games, there are Linux kernel patches being floated to allow mainline support for a sub-$200 ARM-powered handheld gaming console.

Being worked on recently by Boris Brezillon at Collabora is Panthor, a new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver for supporting the newer Arm Mali graphics processors.

Flowblade 2.12 is now available as this multi-track, non-linear video editor for Linux systems. Shotcut as another open-source video editor also recently put out a new version too.

One of the latest Linux kernel patch series posted by AMD Linux engineers is for enabling an AMD QoS RMID pinning feature found within their latest generation processors.

As part of AWS Nitro Enclaves, coming for the Linux 6.8 kernel in the new year is a Nitro Secure Module driver.

A number of Phoronix readers have been inquiring whether using the newer Linux 6.6 stable kernel or Linux 6.7 development kernel deliver any additional gains when running on the new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series hardware. Here are some benchmarks looking at that while using a Threadripper 7980X workstation.

TuxClocker continues on its quest as being one of the leading open-source GUI control panels for overclockers and enthusiasts on Linux. Out this morning is TuxClocker 1.4 that brings more features for making this Qt-based open-source app more useful for those overclocking or just wanting to keep a better eye on their hardware's performance and thermals/power from the Linux desktop.

The newest monthly release of FEX is now available for this open-source project that allows running x86_64 games and applications on 64-bit ARM (AArch64) Linux environments.

Red Hat's Richard Hughes just released Fwupd 1.9.10 as the newest version of this open-source utility for facilitating device and system firmware/BIOS updates under Linux in conjunction with the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) for the easy distribution of such firmware updates.

Armbian 23.11 was released this week as the decade-old Linux distribution project focused on providing good Arm single board computer support.

It's the season for hardware and software upgrades as Phoronix.com rolls out to new infrastructure. Pardon any downtime or interruptions over the next few hours.

GDB 14.1 has been released today as the newest version of the GNU Debugger for source-level debugging of C/C++, Rust, Fortran, Go, Ada, and other languages.

Linus Torvalds released the Linux 6.7-rc4 kernel around twelve hours early today due to his end-of-year travels.

AMD has begun submitting "new stuff" to DRM-Next for preparations ahead of the Linux 6.8 kernel cycle in the new year.

For those that happen to own an ASRock Rack X570D4U micro-ATX motherboard or are in the market for a server-grade AMD Ryzen 5000 series motherboard, patches are pending as this motherboard works on OpenBMC support as an alternative to the proprietary BMC software stack that ships with this AMD Ryzen 5000 series + ECC DDR4 supported motherboard.

The drm-misc-next changes sent out this week to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.8 kernel cycle include a few interesting additions worth mentioning for Linux desktop users.

Joining the likes of the Aquacomputer and NZXT water/liquid cooling hardware monitoring/control "HWMON" kernel drivers, a Gigabyte AORUS Waterforce AIO Coolers Linux driver is being developed.

The PVR Vulkan driver being developed within Mesa for modern PowerVR graphics hardware has now landed support for using the upcoming PowerVR DRM kernel driver that is being upstreamed in Linux 6.8.

On Friday another round of fixes were merged for the Bcachefs file-system for the in-development Linux 6.7 kernel.

Vulkan 1.3.272 was published on Friday as the latest routine spec update for this high performance graphics and compute API.

Two years ago Cloudflare rolled out their "Gen 11" server fleet built around AMD EPYC Milan processors and on Friday the company began talking about their forthcoming "Gen 12" server designs that will soon be rolling out across their data centers for powering this widely-used web infrastructure.

With this week's release of the Plasma 6.0 beta and beta milestones for KDE Frameworks 6 and the latest Gear apps, KDE has now entered the bug-fixing phase ahead of the stable releases coming up in February. But prior to that bug-fixing shift, a few more features were merged.

Steam on Linux enjoyed a various nice boost in popularity during the course of November at least as it concerns Valve's Steam Survey.

Miriway is an effort for bringing Wayland to desktops not currently having native Wayland support and is made possible via the Canonical-developed Mir. Miriway has been a side-project of Alan Griffiths as the lead Mir developer and today he published a blog post with more details for users interested in making use of it.

November was very busy on Phoronix with all of the benchmarking around the new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series, the much anticipated Framework 13 laptop review, a lot of Wayland accomplishments being made this week, excitement building around the upcoming KDE Plasma 6.0 desktop release, and the Linux 6.7 kernel getting underway with new features like the Bcachefs file-system.

Following good progress in October and this former-Mozilla browser engine project receiving funding recently for "table" support, Servo developers continued implementing more functionality over the course of November.