Linux 6.3 Features, Intel Sapphire Rapids & More Made For An Exciting January
Making the month an exciting start to 2023 was the launch of the Intel 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors, more AMD EPYC Genoa testing on Phoronix, the usual GPU and driver testing on Linux, features beginning to queue ahead of the Linux 6.3 merge window in February, the BSD-powered helloSystem having out a shiny new release, and other open-source/Linux milestones to celebrate.
While as exciting as the month was due to the continued and extreme use of ad-blockers by the open-source/Linux user-base and the global state of the economy (and many advertisers pursuing Facebook and YouTube these days...), operations here remain difficult. So if you enjoy the work I relentlessly carry out day in and day out, this is your monthly reminder to join Phoronix Premium to enjoy the site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, access to the web-site's dark mode, and other benefits. Tips via PayPal or Stripe are always welcome as well.
With that said the most popular reviews on Phoronix for the month included:
AMD Ryzen 5 7600 / Ryzen 7 7700 / Ryzen 9 7900 Linux Performance
Last week at the AMD CES 2023 keynote hosted by Lisa Su, new 65 Watt Ryzen 7000 series processors were announced. These more affordable Zen 4 processors are going retail this week and today marks the embargo lift. Up on the Linux testing block are the Ryzen 5 7600, Ryzen 7 7700, and Ryzen 9 7900 processors.
Intel Xeon Platinum 8490H "Sapphire Rapids" Performance Benchmarks
Now that the 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" and Xeon CPU Max Series overview is out of the way, you are probably very eager to see some independent performance benchmarks of the much anticipated Sapphire Rapids CPUs that are going up against AMD 4th Gen EPYC "Genoa" processors for 2023... For kicking off our Sapphire Rapids benchmarking, first up is a look at the Xeon Platinum 8490H performance under Linux as the flagship SKU.
The Performance Impact From Different Arch Linux Kernel Flavors
Arch Linux has five different officially supported kernel builds: stable, hardened, long-term. real-time, and Zen, but which of these is the fastest for desktop Arch Linux users? Here are some fresh benchmarks looking at the performance out of these different kernel build options for Arch Linux and its derivatives.
NVIDIA Gaming/GPU Performance: Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Benchmarks
Last week was a fresh look at the AMD Radeon graphics/gaming performance between Windows and Linux using the very latest drivers. Today the testing wrapped up from some holiday benchmarking looking at the NVIDIA GeForce performance under Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.10 Linux for how the drivers on both operating systems are currently competing.
AVX-512 Performance Comparison: AMD Genoa vs. Intel Sapphire Rapids & Ice Lake
With last week's launch of Intel's 4th Gen Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids server processors, Intel heavily talked up the shiny new accelerators and the big performance potential of AMX, but not really showcased and only heard through the grapevine was the improved AVX-512 implementation found with these new processors. With Sapphire Rapids there is reduced penalties from engaging AVX-512 -- and for some AVX-512 instructions, no longer any measurable impact -- compared to prior generation Xeon processors. In this article is a look at the performance for a wide variety of workloads with AVX-512 on/off not just for Sapphire Rapids but also for prior generation Ice Lake as well as AMD's new EPYC 4th Gen "Genoa" processors where they have introduced AVX-512 for the first time.
Intel Arc Graphics A770: Windows 11 vs. Linux Benchmarks
Following the year-end looks at Windows 11 vs. Linux graphics/gaming performance for AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards, today's article is my first look at the Windows 11 vs. Linux performance for Intel Arc Graphics with the flagship A770 graphics card.
Intel Core i5 13400 Linux Performance - Raptor Lake 10 Cores / 16 Threads For $239
Earlier this month at CES, Intel announced the 35 and 65 Watt Raptor Lake processors alongside the 13th Gen Core Mobile CPUs. Those new Raptor Lake desktop CPUs are now available from multiple Internet retailers and the mid-range Core i5 13400 recently arrived at Phoronix to put it through its paces under Linux.
AMD Radeon vs. Intel Arc Graphics With Linux 6.2 + Mesa 23.0
Following the Windows vs. Linux benchmarks with Intel Arc Graphics from last week, in today's article is a look at how the Intel Arc Graphics A750 and A770 are competing to the AMD Radeon graphics when using the very latest Linux 6.2 kernel along with Mesa 23.0-devel for providing the very latest open-source graphics driver support from each vendor.
X.Org vs. Wayland Linux Gaming Performance For NVIDIA GeForce + AMD Radeon In Early 2023
With recent NVIDIA's proprietary driver updates continuing to refine their Wayland support, the open-source AMDGPU Linux graphics drivers continuing to be enhanced, and work on the GNOME desktop with Mutter compositor continuing to advance, today's benchmarking article is looking at how the GNOME session under X.Org and Wayland for (X)Wayland is performing across various Linux games. It's been a while since I last ran a X.Org vs. (X)Wayland Linux gaming comparison so today's article is a fresh look from Ubuntu 22.10 while moving to the very latest graphics drivers and newest Steam Play Experimental state.
DDR5 Memory Channel Scaling Performance With AMD EPYC 9004 Series
In addition to the big performance uplift from AVX-512, up to 96 cores per socket, and other Zen 4 architectural improvements, also empowering the EPYC 9004 "Genoa" processors is the support for up to 12 channels of DDR5-4800 memory. In this article is a wide assortment of benchmarks looking at the AMD EPYC 9654 performance across varying numbers of populated DDR5 memory channels.
And of the 224 news articles, the most popular news stories on Phoronix included:
DragonFlyBSD's HAMMER2 File-System Being Ported To NetBSD
NetBSD continues using the FFS file-system by default while it's offered ZFS support that has been slowly improving -- in NetBSD-CURRENT is the ability to use ZFS as the root file-system if first booting to FFS, for example. There may be another modern file-system option soon with an effort underway to port DragonFlyBSD's HAMMER2 over to NetBSD.
Steam On Linux Metrics End Out 2022 With Some Odd Numbers
Valve has just published the Steam Survey results for December 2022 that come in at a bit of a surprise.
Firefox 109 vs. Chrome 109 Browser Benchmarks On Ubuntu Linux + Core i9 13900K
It's been a while since last having a fresh look at the Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome performance on the Linux desktop, but with a slow Linux/open-source news weekend, here are some fresh numbers with their latest browser releases.
Debian 12 "Bookworm" Hits Its First Freeze
Debian 12 (codenamed "Bookworm") is expected to be released later this year and as such the first of several code/package freezes has begun.
OpenZFS Lands A Very Nice Performance Optimization
A very nice feature pull request was merged to OpenZFS that can provide a nice performance improvement to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation to kick off the new year.
A Developer Hopes To Restore GCC's Java Front-End
Following GCC Rust being merged and the Modula-2 front-end, a developer hopes to restore the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Java front-end, GCJ.
Linux Preparing To Disable Drivers For Microsoft's RNDIS Protocol
With the next Linux kernel cycle we could see upstream disable their driver support for Microsoft's Remote Network Driver Interface Specification (RNDIS) protocol due to security concerns.
helloSystem 0.8 Released As macOS Inspired FreeBSD Desktop OS
Following the demise of PC-BSD/TrueOS, the most compelling BSD-based desktop operating system with a pleasant out-of-the-box user experience is helloSystem. The helloSystem OS has been aiming to be the macOS of the BSDs and for the past few years has been building a macOS-inspired desktop atop FreeBSD. Out today is helloSystem 0.8 as their newest version built atop FreeBSD 13.1.
Linux 6.3 To Remove Obsolete GPU Drivers: ATI Rage 128, 3Dfx, S3 Savage, i810 & More
Today a new drm-misc-next pull request was submitted for DRM-Next of various Direct Rendering Manager changes queuing for Linux 6.3. Most significant with today's pull request is eliminating seven old DRM drivers that are for vintage hardware and these open-source drivers are no longer maintained.
Ubuntu's Real-Time Kernel Approaching GA Status
Last year with the release of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS there was a beta real-time kernel offering from Canonical.
A Prominent Linux Kernel Developer Re-Joins AMD
Those paying close attention to the Linux kernel development may have noticed a small change to how a key Linux developer is marking his kernel patches.
OBS Studio 29 Released With AV1 Encode Additions, Upward Compression Filter
OBS Studio 29.0 is out this weekend as the latest major feature release to this very popular, cross-platform software for screencasting and screen recording purposes.
Google To Allow Rust Code In The Chromium Browser
Google announced today that moving forward they will be allowing Rust code into the Chromium code-base, the open-source project that ultimately served as the basis for their Chrome web browser.
The Linux OS Originally Known As Lindows Is Out With Linspire 12 Alpha
Linspire as the Linux distribution whose roots go back two decades ago to when it originally started out as "Lindows" is preparing a new major release. The current incarnation of Linspire though started five years ago when PC/OpenSystems acquired the Linspire and Freespire rights from Xandros. Linspire claims to be "the easiest desktop Linux" and are looking to improve things further with their v12 release.
Linux 4.9.337 Released To End Out The 2016 LTS Series
The Linux 4.9 kernel was released back in 2016 and Greg Kroah-Hartman today issued the final point release for that kernel series with the Long Term Support (LTS) period now expired.
Kodi 20 Released With VA-API AV1 Support, Steam Deck Controls Support
Kodi 20 "Nexus" was released today as the latest major feature release for this widely-used HTPC/PVR software formerly known as XBMC.
Red Hat Planning A Hackfest To Further Advance HDR Support On The Linux Desktop
Red Hat has been among the key Linux stakeholders working for years toward the ultimate goal of ensuring the Linux desktop will have suitable High Dynamic Range (HDR) support in place. They are working to organize a hackfest this year to further the progress being made on HDR application support on the GNOME desktop as well as associated open-source graphics driver infrastructure.
Linux 6.3 To Bring Analog TV Support Improvements
With the Linux 6.2 merge window behind us, feature work for the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) changes targeting now the Linux 6.3 kernel have begun queuing with DRM-Next.
Firewalld 1.3 Released With Easier Firewall Management For More Services
Firewalld 1.3 is out today as the newest version of this open-source firewall daemon used on Linux systems.
Linux Developers Eye Orphaning The JFS File-System
Following the Linux kernel deprecating the ReiserFS file-system and with plans to drop the kernel driver in 2025, the next file-system target being evaluated for whether it should stick around the kernel is the Journaled File-System, JFS.
Add A Comment
