Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

OpenVPN DCO Looks Like It Might Be Ready For Linux 6.14 To Speed-Up VPN Performance
OpenVPN DCO Looks Like It Might Be Ready For Linux 6.14 To Speed-Up VPN Performance
111 Minutes Ago - Linux Networking - OpenVPN Data Channel Offload - 3 Comments

In development for several years has been the OpenVPN DCO Linux kernel module for data channel offload (DCO) capabilities to provide for much faster virtual private networking (VPN) performance. It's looking like the lengthy review process on OpenVPN DCO is about wrapping up and leaving hope that it will be ready to premiere in next year's Linux 6.14 kernel.

VTE-Based Linux Terminals Now Support A Nice Feature Led By Windows Terminal
VTE-Based Linux Terminals Now Support A Nice Feature Led By Windows Terminal
7 Hours Ago - Desktop - Better Progress Indicators - 23 Comments

VTE-based terminals on Linux like Ptyxis are now seeing support introduced to better display progress state for long-running processes with a more visually pleasing progress bar. Microsoft's Windows Terminal has already supported this feature while now with systemd beginning to support using these Operating System Command escape sequences, Linux terminal support is on the rise.

3 December

AMD ROCm 6.3 Tags Begin Appearing On GitHub
AMD ROCm 6.3 Tags Begin Appearing On GitHub
3 December 08:50 PM EST - Radeon - ROCm 6.3 - 6 Comments

Last week ROCm 6.3 was announced on the AMD Community Blog with a set of nice enhancements to this open-source GPU compute stack. While some good additions, when the announcement went live ROCm 6.2 software was still showing up as the latest and the open-source code via GitHub wasn't yet reflecting ROCm 6.3... That changed today.

Intel Announces Arc B-Series "Battlemage" Discrete Graphics With Linux Support
Intel Announces Arc B-Series "Battlemage" Discrete Graphics With Linux Support
3 December 09:00 AM EST - Graphics Cards - 57 Comments

Succeeding the Intel Arc Graphics discrete graphics cards that launched two years ago as the DG2/Alchemist series, the next-gen Battlemage graphics cards are being announced today. The embargo lifts today on the new Intel Arc B-Series graphics cards with initial availability next week. Like the prior generation Intel graphics and as discussed already in many Phoronix articles, Battlemage is still treated to fully open-source graphics driver support on Linux.

Rustls Multi-Threaded Performance Is Battering OpenSSL
Rustls Multi-Threaded Performance Is Battering OpenSSL
3 December 06:14 AM EST - Programming - Rustls Benchmarks - 147 Comments

The Rustls project as a modern TLS library written in the Rust programming language and an alternative to the likes of the widely-used OpenSSL and Google's BoringSSL has published some new performance figures. When looking at the multi-threaded server performance of Rustls, its performance is typically outperforming BoringSSL by a significant margin and downright dominating over OpenSSL.

2 December

NVK, RADV, & Other Mesa Drivers Ready With Launch Day Vulkan 1.4 Support
NVK, RADV, & Other Mesa Drivers Ready With Launch Day Vulkan 1.4 Support
2 December 02:09 PM EST - Mesa - Vulkan 1.4 - 14 Comments

Years ago when new OpenGL spec releases would occur, it could take months or years for the open-source Mesa drivers to catch-up in supporting the latest versions... Thankfully in the Vulkan space it continues to prove to be a very different story. As we've seen with prior Vulkan specs, today's Vulkan 1.4 spec release is greeted by same-day Mesa patches.

AMD Per-Core Energy Counter Support Slated For Linux 6.14
AMD Per-Core Energy Counter Support Slated For Linux 6.14
2 December 10:00 AM EST - AMD - Per-Core Energy Monitoring - 2 Comments

While the Linux 6.13 merge window just closed yesterday in landing all of the new features and functionality for that first kernel version of 2025, already for the Linux 6.14 kernel cycle to follow a feature was queued up early this morning in a TIP branch: AMD per-core energy counter support.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Retires
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Retires
2 December 08:47 AM EST - Intel - Pat Gelsinger Retires - 76 Comments

While Intel has been under much financial difficulties and as they pursue their build out of new fabs to better compete with TSMC, to much surprise Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired effective today.

Llamafile 0.8.17 Brings New Web UI For This Easy-To-Distribute AI LLM Framework
Llamafile 0.8.17 Brings New Web UI For This Easy-To-Distribute AI LLM Framework
2 December 06:34 AM EST - Free Software - Llamafile 0.8.17 - Add A Comment

Llamafile 0.8.17 debuted this weekend as the newest version of this Mozilla research project for making it easy to distribute and run AI large language models (LLMs) within a single file. As implied by its name, Llamafile leverages Llama.cpp along with other open-source software into one consistent framework for helping to make single-file LLM executables a reality.

XWayland Lands Support For xdg-system-bell
XWayland Lands Support For xdg-system-bell
2 December 06:15 AM EST - Wayland - XWayland + xdg-system-bell - 14 Comments

Olivier Fourdan has merged support for using the xdg-system-bell protocol by XWayland for dealing with "system bell" functionality for Wayland compositors supporting this newer protocol for ringing the system bell or otherwise implementing a visual indicator that a system bell type event may have been triggered.

1 December

Lutris 0.5.18 Linux Game Manager Brings Many Improvements
Lutris 0.5.18 Linux Game Manager Brings Many Improvements
1 December 08:18 PM EST - Linux Gaming - Lutris 0.5.18 - 6 Comments

Lutris 0.5.18 is out today as the newest version of this open-source game manager for Linux systems to help with installing and playing a variety of games whether they be native Linux titles, emulated Windows games with the likes of Wine / Proton, or console emulated games and more. Lutris also continues integrating with the likes of Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, and other online game services for providing a nice Linux gaming experience.

Apple M4, More AMD Zen 5 Benchmarks & Linux Kernel Drama From November
Apple M4, More AMD Zen 5 Benchmarks & Linux Kernel Drama From November
1 December 06:45 AM EST - Phoronix - November 2024 Highlights - 1 Comment

November was filled with interesting Linux benchmarks ranging from the Apple M4 testing kicking off to ongoing AMD Zen 5 benchmarks both for desktops and servers, a lot of exciting upstream kernel activity (and some drama...), and more. Even with the end of year holidays around, there remains new and original content on Phoronix each and every day. During November there were 250 original news articles on Phoronix along with another 14 Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured-length benchmark articles.

NVIDIA's New Linux Patches For GPU Direct RDMA For Device-Private Pages
NVIDIA's New Linux Patches For GPU Direct RDMA For Device-Private Pages
1 December 06:26 AM EST - Linux Kernel - P2P DMA For GPU-Centric Apps - 2 Comments

NVIDIA engineer Yonatan Maman posted a set of "request for comments" patches this Sunday to implement GPU Direct RDMA "P2P DMA" for device private pages. This is the latest in the effort by multiple vendors to allow more efficient data sharing between GPUs/accelerators and other devices like network adapters.

30 November

Clang AutoFDO + Propeller Optimization Support Merged For Linux 6.13
30 November 09:00 PM EST - Linux Kernel - AutoFDO + Propeller - 4 Comments

Last night when writing about the Clang AutoFDO and Propeller optimization patches sent in for Linux 6.13 I had wondered whether Linus Torvalds would go through with the pull request given some of his past commentary around aggressive compiler optimizations... But to much delight, this evening Linus Torvalds has merged the Kbuild pull request that introduces Clang-based AutoFDO and Propeller compiler optimization support for allowing greater kernel performance out of tailored (profiled) workloads.

Resources System Monitoring App For GNOME Now Displays NPU Usage
30 November 07:00 AM EST - GNOME - Resources v1.7 - 30 Comments

As an alternative to the GNOME System Monitor application for system monitoring, Resources has been in development as a currently unofficial, GNOME-aligned resource/hardware monitoring application written in the Rust programming language. Resources v1.7 was released on Friday and now has the ability to monitor NPU usage and other enhancements.

Linux 6.13 Hits A "Tipping Point" With More Rust Drivers Expected Soon
30 November 06:00 AM EST - Linux Kernel - Linux 6.13 char/misc - 65 Comments

In addition to the USB updates and big staging flush merged yesterday for the Linux 6.13 kernel merge window, the "char/misc" pull was also honored for that catch-all of various kernel changes. With the char/misc pull there are some notable additions for those wanting to write kernel drivers within the Rust programming language.

29 November

Linux 6.13 Staging Clears Out 107k Lines Of Code From Old & Unmaintained Drivers
29 November 06:43 AM EST - Linux Kernel - Linux 6.13 Staging - 41 Comments

Greg Kroah-Hartman is out today with all of the pull requests for Linux 6.13 of the areas of the kernel he oversees. Most notable with the updates on the staging side are clearing out several drivers seeing no real code activity and no apparent users of the mainline Linux kernel... As such the staging pull lightens the kernel by around 107k lines of code.

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