Threadripper 7000 Series, Wayland, Linux 6.7 & Other November Highlights
With more than 300 original articles written on Phoronix by your's truly for the month, here's a look back at the most popular content on Phoronix for November. As always, if you enjoy all of the daily content please consider checking out Phoronix Premium and following along via Twitter and Facebook.
The most popular featured articles / Linux hardware reviews included:
Ubuntu Linux Squeezes ~20% More Performance Than Windows 11 On New AMD Zen 4 Threadripper
With currently reviewing the HP Z6 G5 A workstation powered by the new 96-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX Zen 4 processor, one of the areas I was curious about was how well HP's tuned Microsoft Windows 11 compares to that of Linux. In this article is looking at how the Microsoft Windows 11 performance is out-of-the-box with the HP Z6 G5 A workstation as configured by HP versus a clean install of Ubuntu 23.10 with the Linux 6.5 kernel.
Framework 13 With AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Makes For A Great Linux Laptop
For those in the market for an AMD Ryzen 7040 series (Zen 4) laptop, the Framework 13 laptop is a great option for those wanting a Linux-friendly device and is a rare breed in being a completely upgradeable laptop similar to Framework's Intel laptop models. I've been testing out the Framework Laptop 13 the past month and after a BIOS update has been working out wonderfully on Linux.
Trying Out & Benchmarking Bcachefs On Linux 6.7
The biggest surprise this week so far with the Linux 6.7 merge window has been the landing of the Bcachefs file-system. Here is an early look at Bcachefs with Linux 6.7 and some preliminary benchmarks.
Intel Arc Graphics vs. AMD Radeon vs. NVIDIA GeForce For 1080p Linux Graphics In Late 2023
Following last month's launch of the Intel Arc Graphics A580 for a sub-$200 graphics card backed by an open-source Linux driver stack I ran some benchmarks looking at the Intel Arc Graphics compute performance against NVIDIA's proprietary driver stack. In today's article is a fresh look at the 1080p Linux gaming/graphics performance across Intel Arc Graphics, AMD Radeon, and NVIDIA GeForce GPUs while using the latest Linux drivers.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X & 7970X Linux Performance Benchmarks
Last month AMD announced the Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series along with the new Threadripper PRO 7000 WX Series for bringing Zen 4 to the HEDT and workstation space. Ahead of AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series processors becoming available via DIY retailers on the 21st, today marks the review/performance embargo expiration for the Threadripper 7000 series. First up today is a look at how the new Threadripper 7970X 32-core and Threadripper 7980X 64-core processors are performing for Linux HEDT workstations... Or the TLDR: the incredible Linux performance and potential for a wide-range of creator and developer workloads now possible with the Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX Linux Performance Benchmarks
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X/7980X Linux benchmark review shows just how well the new Zen 4 powered HEDT Threadripper processors can perform with up to the 64 core flagship offering. The results were stunning while today the review embargo also expires on the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 series for the professional-catered SKUs that offer up to 96 cores and support up to 8 channel DDR5 system memory. Here are the initial benchmarks of the 96-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX for showing the performance potential of this outright workstation performance monster if your budget allows.
FreeBSD 14.0 Is Delivering Great Performance Uplift & Running Well In Early Tests
Following last week's release of FreeBSD 14.0, I've begun testing out this major FreeBSD operating system update on a number of servers. What's clear so far is the performance being much improved with FreeBSD 14.0 on modern x86_64 Intel/AMD servers over FreeBSD 13.
AMD Ryzen Lenovo Laptop Linux Performance For Zen 2 / Zen 3 / Zen 3+ / Zen 4
With recently picking up the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 4 powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U and given the recent release of Fedora 39, I found it to be a nice time to provide a Lenovo ThinkPad retrospect of how the AMD Ryzen laptop Linux performance has evolved the past few generations. In today's article is a look at how the AMD Ryzen 7 mobile series laptop performance has evolved going back to Zen 2 for various ThinkPad models while all testing was carried out on the brand new Fedora Workstation 39 Linux release.
Benchmarking Five Linux Distros Against Windows 11 On The Threadripper PRO 7995WX / HP Z6 G5 A
Given the interest in the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX Linux performance and the benchmarks of Ubuntu Linux vs. Windows 11 on this 96-core / 192-thread workstation processor, I've extended that comparison to now feature five Linux distributions up against Microsoft Windows on this HP Z6 G5 A workstation for greater perspective into the results.
AMD EPYC Genoa/Genoa-X & Bergamo vs. Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids On Ubuntu 23.10
While Ubuntu 23.10 isn't a long-term support (LTS) release and thus won't see too much exposure in the enterprise space, it's worthwhile today looking at the AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon server performance. It's interesting for a look ahead being just a few months until Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and with Ubuntu 23.10 incorporating GCC 13 that will also be the default compiler of Ubunu 24.04 among other close software package versions, the kernel not too far off from what will be in this next LTS release, and with Ubuntu 23.10's Linux 6.5 kernel bringing some nice performance optimizations. So with that said I recently wrapped up some fresh benchmarks looking at the current generation Intel Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids performance against AMD EPYC 9004 Bergamo, Genoa, and Genoa-X processors.
And the most popular news on Phoronix for the past month:
Roundcube Open-Source Webmail Software Merges With Nextcloud
The open-source Roundcube webmail software project has "merged" with Nextcloud, the prominent open-source personal cloud software.
Firefox Is Going To Try And Ship With Wayland Enabled By Default
Guardrails have been in place where the Firefox browser has enabled Wayland by default (when running on recent GTK versions) but as of today that code has been removed... Firefox will try to move forward with stable releases where Wayland will ship by default!
Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed With The Linux 6.7 Kernel
Overnight the mainline Linux kernel has retired support for Intel Itanium (IA-64) processors.
ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Improving UEFI Boot, DirectX Work & NT6+ API Prep
The ReactOS project today published their latest newesletter that outlines development progress made in recent months for this open-source operating system project striving for binary compatibility with Windows device drivers and application/user-space software.
KDE Plasma 6.0 Is Enabling Wayland By Default, Initial Support For HDR-Capable Games
It's been an exciting week in the KDE space as along with releasing Plasma 6.0 Alpha, they have also committed to shipping Plasma 6.0 with the Wayland session being enabled by default.
RISC-V With Linux 6.7 Gains Optimized TLB Flushing, Software Shadow Call Stacks
In addition to the many x86/x86_64 and AArch64 improvements this round for Linux 6.7, on the RISC-V architecture side are some exciting kernel advancements too.
Canonical Launches MicroCloud To Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud In Minutes"
The latest software offering announced today by Canonical with an enterprise focus and their hopes of driving new Ubuntu Pro and support subscriptions is MicroCloud. Their MicroCloud software aims to make it easy to deploy a private cloud that is a "fully functional cloud in minutes" atop Ubuntu Linux.
64-bit ARM Linux Kernel Against CPU-Specific Optimizations: "Pretty Unmaintainable"
While micro-architecture specific optimizations are rather common place within the Linux x86_64 kernel for various Intel and AMD CPU families with various performance tricks, the ARM64 Linux kernel maintainers are against introducing new micro-architecture specific optimizations as it affects new ARM processors.
The Linux 6.7 Merge Window Is Massive With Many New Features
The Linux 6.7 merge window has been downright exciting with additions like Nouveau GSP support and the Bcachefs file-system being added. It's also been downright massive as one of the largest merge windows in recent history in terms of code changes. Here's some statistics of the Linux 6.7 merge window ahead of today's Linux 6.7-rc1 release.
Firefox 121 Is Looking Good For Having Wayland Enabled By Default
Firefox 121 is aiming to ship with Wayland support enabled by default rather than falling back to XWayland on modern Linux desktops. So far things are looking up for this indeed remaining the case for next month's Firefox 121 stable release.
Debian's MIPS64EL CPU Port Is At Risk Due To Declining Hardware Access
Debian's MIPS64EL that is a 64-bit little endian port using the N64 ABI is at risk due to declining access for building the Debian 64-bit MIPS packages. MIPS64EL is now being treated as an "out of sync" architecture due to lacking sufficient build daemon resources for timely building new packages and if the situation doesn't improve, it may not be suitable as a release architecture for Debian 13 "Trixie".
One Of Ubuntu's Great Features Has Been Broken For One Month
One of the great niche features of Ubuntu Linux has been the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA that's been maintained by Canonical for providing daily kernel builds of the Linux Git kernel state as well as of all point releases and release candidates. Sadly it's now been broken for one month for this very convenient feature.
Firefox 120 Ready With Global Privacy Control, WebAssembly GC On By Default
Ahead of the official release announcement due out tomorrow, the Mozilla Firefox 120.0 release binaries are now available.
LLVM Now Using PGO For Building x86_64 Windows Release Binaries: ~22% Faster Builds
The LLVM project is now employing profile-guided optimizations (PGO) when building their x86_64 Microsoft Windows release packages. Making use of PGO is able to make their Clang build a stunning 22% faster.
OpenZFS Lands Exciting RAIDZ Expansion Feature
In addition to the OpenZFS code this week landing sync parallelism to improve write performance scalability, another shiny new feature was also merged: RAIDZ expansion.
The Linux Kernel Preparing To Drop Infrastructure For Old & Obsolete Graphics Drivers
Back during the Linux 6.3 kernel support for a number of legacy DRM drivers was removed and now patches have been volleyed for taking things one step further by now eliminating the infrastructure for supporting these older user-space mode-setting graphics/display drivers.
NVIDIA Pushes 62MB Of GSP Binary Firmware Blobs Into Linux-Firmware.Git
As mentioned last week, merged for the Linux 6.7 kernel is NVIDIA GSP firmware support in the Nouveau driver so that these NVIDIA firmware blobs can handle hardware initialization and power management related tasks. This support is optional right now for the GeForce RTX 20 / RTX 30 series hardware with Nouveau but necessary if wanting better performance via re-clocking the GPUs. The GSP firmware is a mandatory requirement for Nouveau with the NVIDIA RTX 40 GPUs and moving forward.
PCSX2 Emulator Disables Wayland Support By Default
While more applications continue enabling Wayland support and getting into a shape by default, the PCSX2 open-source PlayStation 2 emulator recently moved in the opposite direction: disabling Wayland support for their distributed builds.
systemd 255-rc1 Brings "Blue Screen of Death" Support & New Tool To Spawn VMs
Systemd 255-rc1 is out this morning and it's packed with even more features for this dominant Linux init system and a growing list of other system utilities. Systemd 255 even is introducing systemd-bsod as a "Blue Screen of Death" for displaying important error messages during boot failure, systemd-vmspawn as a new tool to spawn virtual machines, and other new features.
Wine 8.20 Closes 13 Year Old Bug To Register URL Protocol Handlers On Linux
Wine 8.20 is out today and it takes care of quite a vintage bug report... A feature request from 2010 to be able to register URL protocol handlers under Linux.
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