Arc Graphics, Google KataOS, Python 3.11 & Linux 6.1 Excited Open-Source Enthusiasts
Below is a look at the most popular original content on Phoronix during the course of October. As always if you appreciate this original content and relentless Linux benchmarking and hardware testing, please consider showing your support by joining Phoronix Premium to enjoy the site ad-free and multi-page articles presented on a single page. Tips via PayPal or Stripe are also welcome and help to sustain operations. Unfortunately Phoronix remains dependent upon ads for its continued existence and the state of the ad industry along with ad-blocker usage remains rather brutal... Thanks for your support in chugging along towards Phoronix.com's 19th birthday.
Of the most popular Linux hardware reviews for the past month on Phoronix they included:
Intel Arc Graphics A750 + A770 Linux Gaming Performance
Today the embargo lifts on reviews of the Intel Arc Graphics A750 and A770 graphics cards ahead of their retail availability set for next week. I've had the A750 and A770 at Phoronix the past week and today can share initial performance figures on these Intel DG2/Alchemist discrete graphics cards under Linux with their open-source driver stack.
Intel Core i9 13900K Linux Benchmarks - Performing Very Well On Ubuntu
Last week Intel began shipping their 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors. As noted in that launch-day article last week, unfortunately I wasn't able to deliver my usual Linux performance review in time due to hitting some DDR5 issues with my test platform, but those have now been resolved with a new Z790 motherboard. So as the first of my Raptor Lake Linux benchmarks, here is a look at how the top-end Core i9 13900K performs against the AMD Ryzen 7000 series on Ubuntu Linux along with the older Intel/AMD processors.
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Linux Performance
At the end of September when the review embargo lifted I looked at the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X for our launch-day Linux testing and that was then followed by the Ryzen 7 7700X Linux review. Since then I received the fourth and final Ryzen 7000 series desktop processor currently available: the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X. The Ryzen 5 7600X is currently AMD's most affordable Zen 4 processor at $299 USD and provides six cores / 12 threads and a boost clock up to 5.3GHz.
Disabling Spectre V2 Mitigations Is What Can Impair AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Performance
Last week I shared some initial numbers how surprisingly when disabling Zen 4 CPU security mitigations can actually *hurt* the Ryzen 7000 series CPU performance. While conventional wisdom and with past Intel/AMD processors yield better performance when disabling the CPU security mitigations, with the Ryzen 9 7950X it was found to be basically the opposite. I have since conducted more tests and using an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X to confirm the earlier results and dig deeper into the data.
Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance Is Very Close On The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
One of the leading test requests at Phoronix around my AMD Zen 4 Linux benchmarking has been some side-by-side comparisons against Microsoft Windows 11. While older, high core count AMD systems have particularly performed very well under Linux against Windows, with new hardware there is sometimes hiccups and various limitations with the at-launch support especially on the open-source Linux side. So for your viewing pleasure today are some initial AMD Ryzen 9 7950X benchmarks under Microsoft Windows 11 22H2 up against Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS and a near-final development snapshot of the upcoming Ubuntu 22.10.
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" Rocks On Intel's Clear Linux
This shouldn't be too surprising to long-time Phoronix readers, but Intel's performance-optimized Clear Linux operating system is yielding great performance with AMD Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors. Intel's Clear Linux has long shipped HWCAPS support and tuning for AVX-512 and the like to be able to provide optimized libraries when running on their own AVX-512 processors. But with AMD now joining the AVX-512 party -- and Zen 4's AVX-512 implementation performing great -- Intel's Clear Linux distribution is showing leading performance numbers on these new AMD desktop processors.
Python 3.11 Performance Benchmarks Show Huge Improvement
While this summer I ran some early Python 3.11 benchmarks using the development state at the time, given yesterday's Python 3.11 release I ran some fresh performance tests of the official Python 3.11 version against prior Python 3 releases.
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X P-State/CPUFreq Frequency Scaling Performance On Linux
For those wondering the difference using the aging ACPI CPUFreq driver or the newer AMD P-State CPU frequency scaling drivers make for modern Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" desktops, here are some CPUFreq/P-State driver tests using the Ryzen 9 7950X as well as testing the various governor options and looking at the impact on the CPU power consumption, peak frequency, and thermals too.
Intel Core i5 13600K + Core i9 13900K "Raptor Lake" Linux Preview
Last month Intel announced 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors while today these processors officially go on sale. Today also marks the review embargo lift with Intel having provided Phoronix with the new Core i5 13600K and i9 13900K processors for Linux testing.
Intel Core i5 13600K Linux Performance
Last week I looked at the Intel Core i9 13900K performance under Linux while today the focus is on the Core i5 13600K. The Core i5 13600K is a 14-core / 20-thread processor (6 P cores + 8 E cores), up from 6 P cores + 4 E cores with the prior generation Core i5 12600K. The Core i5 13600K has a recommended customer price of $319~329, which is indeed being honored among Internet retailers and with robust availability. Here is an initial look at how the Core i5 13600K "Raptor Lake" is running under Ubuntu Linux.
And the most popular news items:
Google Chrome Is Already Preparing To Deprecate JPEG-XL
JPEG-XL has been looked on rather favorably as a royalty-free, next-generation lossy/lossless image format with much better performance than JPEG. To much surprise, Google Chrome is already making preparations to deprecate JPEG-XL image support in their browser.
System76's Pop!_OS COSMIC Desktop To Make Use Of Iced Rust Toolkit Rather Than GTK
System76 has been developing their own COSMIC desktop as the next evolution for their Pop!_OS Linux distribution built atop an Ubuntu base. Interestingly with this big COSMIC desktop undertaking, which is being written in the Rust programming language, they have decided to shift away from using the GTK toolkit to instead make use of Iced-Rs as a Rust-native, multi-platform graphical toolkit.
Google Announces KataOS As Security-Focused OS, Leveraging Rust & seL4 Microkernel
Google this week has announced the release of KataOS as their newest operating system effort focused on embedded devices running ambient machine learning workloads. KataOS is security-minded, exclusively uses the Rust programming language, and is built atop the seL4 microkernel as its foundation.
Intel Laptop Users Should Avoid Linux 5.19.12 To Avoid Potentially Damaging The Display
Intel laptop users running Linux are being advised to avoid running the latest Linux 5.19.12 stable kernel point release as it can potentially damage your display.
Linux TUN Network Driver May See A "1000x Speedup" With New, One-Line Patch
Linux's universal TUN driver that provides packet reception and transmission for user-space programs may soon see a 1000x speed-up with a proposed patch sent out today for this network driver.
Rust Infrastructure Pull Request Submitted For Linux 6.1!
It's happening, folks! Linus Torvalds already indicated recently he intends to pull the initial Rust programming language support into the Linux 6.1 kernel cycle and today that pull request was submitted to him. Linux 6.0 isn't out yet but should be on Sunday unless any last minute problems, which in turn will mark the start of the two week v6.1 merge window.
The Linux Kernel May Finally Phase Out Intel i486 CPU Support
Linus Torvalds has backed the idea of possibly removing Intel 486 (i486) processor support from the Linux kernel.
Debian Chooses A Reasonable, Common Sense Solution To Dealing With Non-Free Firmware
Debian developers have been figuring out an updated stance to take on non-free firmware considering the increasing number of devices now having open-source Linux drivers but requiring closed-source firmware for any level of functionality. The voting on the non-free firmware matter has now concluded and the votes tallied...
Modula-2 GCC Compiler Front-End Patches Sent Out For Review
While 2023 is quickly approaching and the Modula-2 programming language has since been succeeded by the Modula-3 and Oberon languages since the late 80's, GNU Modula-2 continues to be worked on as a front-end to the GNU Compiler Collection for this structured, procedural programming language.
Google Outlines Why They Are Removing JPEG-XL Support From Chrome
Following yesterday's article about Google Chrome preparing to deprecate the JPEG-XL image format, a Google engineer has now provided their reasons for dropping this next-generation image format.
The Most Interesting New Features Of Linux 6.0
Barring any last minute reservations today by Linus Torvalds, the Linux 6.0 stable kernel is expected to be christened before the day is through. Linux 6.0 comes with many notable hardware support additions and other improvements, here is a reminder of all what is great about this imminent kernel release.
Python 3.11 Released With Big Performance Improvements, Task Groups For Async I/O
Python 3.11 stable is out today as a rather big update for this popular scripting language.
KDE Plasma 5.27 Planning To Be The Last Plasma 5 Feature Release
With Qt 6 porting and KDE Frameworks 6 development continuing at full-speed, KDE developers are looking at Plasma 5.27 being the last feature release in the Plasma 5 series.
Linux 6.1-rc2 Released: It's "Unusually Large"
Linus Torvalds just released the Linux 6.1-rc2 kernel, which he characterized as "unusually large" in what started off as a quiet week.
VirtualBox 7.0 Released - Full VM Encryption Support, Direct3D Acceleration Using DXVK
It's been a long time since last having anything significant to report on for Oracle's VM VirtualBox software: VirtualBox 6.0 debuted in 2018 and VirtualBox 6.1 in 2019, but since has been rather quiet... But out today is now VirtualBox 7.0 with big features like support for full virtual machine encryption and a new Direct3D 11 based graphics stack, which for Linux use is now going through DXVK.
The Initial Rust Infrastructure Has Been Merged Into Linux 6.1
As a follow-up to the Rust infrastructure pull request for Linux 6.1, Linus Torvalds pulled the initial Rust code into the mainline Linux kernel this evening.
Btrfs Brings Some Great Performance Improvements With Linux 6.1
I always love pull requests that start off with "there's a bunch of performance improvements..." as is the case with the new Btrfs feature pull for Linux 6.1.
Ardour 7.0 Digital Audio Workstation Released
While there has been more open-source digital audio workstation (DAW) software solutions in recent years, Ardour that has been in development since 2005 remains one of the best professional-grade and cross-platform digital audio workstation solutions. It's now even better with today's big Ardour 7.0 release.
Microsoft Promotes Its Open-Source Terminal To The Default For Windows 11 CLI Apps
As some interesting open-source news out of Microsoft today, their open-source Windows Terminal that has been in development the past few years and providing many modern features is now the default beginning with Windows 11 22H2.
Debian 12 Switches To PipeWire & WirePlumber By Default With The GNOME Desktop
In addition to Ubuntu 22.10 switching to PipeWire as the default audio server replacement to PulseAudio, upstream Debian has done the same ahead of their Debian GNU/Linux 12 release next year.
Add A Comment
