Wayland Progress, Ryzen AI & Linux Benchmarks That Made For An Exciting October
During October on Phoronix were 242 original news articles and 15 Linux hardware reviews / featured articles, all written by your's truly. If appreciating all of the original Linux-focused content produced each and every day on Phoronix, please disable any ad-blocker you may be running on your system(s). Alternatively, Phoronix Premium allows you to access the site ad-free, enjoy multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode support, and other benefits. Tips via PayPal and Stripe are always most appreciated too for helping to offset the negative impact of rampant ad-blocking and the sad state of the ad industry.
On a brighter note, during October there were many exciting Linux hardware reviews including:
Intel Arc Graphics A580 On Linux: Open-Source Graphics For Under $200
Last week Intel announced the Arc Graphics A580 as a new mid-range DG2/Alchemist graphics card option that comes in between the entry-level Arc Graphics A380 and the higher-end Arc Graphics A750/A770. With the Arc Graphics A580 coming in at under $200, it's quite an interesting graphics card for those after open-source Linux driver support and/or those wanting to experiment with Intel's growing oneAPI software ecosystem with excellent open-source GPU compute support.
Tweaking SteamOS For Better Steam Deck Performance
A Phoronix reader recently published a guide that at its heart is a set of commands aimed at boosting the performance of SteamOS on the AMD APU powered Steam Deck. Here are some benchmarks showing the performance impact from these changes on the SteamOS 3.5 Preview release.
AMD EPYC 8324P / 8324PN Siena 32-Core Siena Linux Server Performance
Last month AMD launched the EPYC 8004 "Siena" 4th Gen EPYC processors to round out their Zen 4 server processors with the expansive Genoa, Genoa-X, Bergamo, and Siena product portfolios. The new EPYC 8004 series are designed to maximize the power efficiency for server deployments from the data center to edge, teclo, and other non-traditional server environments. Up for testing today is an initial look at the Siena performance in the form of the EPYC 8324P and EPYC 8324PN 32-core parts for seeing how they stack up against 32-core Intel Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" performance.
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Performance With ECC DDR5 Memory
For those curious about the performance implications of using DDR5 ECC memory with AMD Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors, I ran some benchmarks with ECC memory with the Error Correction Code functionality enabled and then disabled for evaluating the impact.
Intel's Open-Source Compute Runtime Performing Increasingly Well Against NVIDIA's Proprietary Linux Driver
Given the recent launch of the Intel Arc Graphics A580 for under $200, I've been working on a fresh round of Intel / AMD Radeon / NVIDIA GeForce Linux gaming/graphics and compute benchmark results. Next week that fresh arsenal of Linux graphics benchmarks on the very latest drivers will be published but for today is a look at the most surprising aspect: the OpenCL-focused GPU compute benchmarks.
Intel Continues To Demonstrate The Importance Of Software Optimizations: Clear Linux + Xeon Max Benchmarks
While the recently released Ubuntu 23.10 is bringing some performance improvements to Intel Xeon Max / Sapphire Rapids, Ubuntu Linux still isn't delivering the best possible out-of-the-box server performance. For that Intel continues to show the importance of software optimizations with the likes of their in-house Clear Linux platform as well as the likes of CentOS Stream having more sensible defaults. Here is a look at the Intel Xeon Max 9480 performance across Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 23.10, CentOS Stream 9, Fedora Server 39, and Clear Linux 40130.
Benchmarks: AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Performance Boosted With Ubuntu 23.10
With Ubuntu 23.10 due for release on Thursday, I've been benchmarking a number of systems to look at the Ubuntu 23.10 performance against prior releases like Ubuntu 23.04 and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Besides the open-source graphics driver performance for Intel and AMD Radeon graphics always being a stand-out improvement, one area that is particularly exciting with Ubuntu 23.10 is for those with newer AMD processors where there are some nice performance gains to find with this new Ubuntu Linux release. Here are side-by-side benchmarks of an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X desktop along with an Intel Core i9 13900K desktop while testing Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS / Ubuntu 23.04 / Ubuntu 23.10.
Linux 6.5+ Is Great For The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 4 / AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U
As shown already the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 4 with AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U works out well on Linux and is very speedy as shown with that prior benchmarking on Linux 6.3, but for those moving to Linux 6.5 or newer the performance and power efficiency is even better. Like for those moving to the newly-released Ubuntu 23.10 with Linux 6.5, there are some nice performance gains to find with this laptop -- similar to the experience seen with various AMD Ryzen desktops on the new kernel.
Benchmarking The Performance Cost To Full Disk Encryption For Modern AMD Ryzen Laptops
With the new AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U Zen 4 mobile processor powering the likes of the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 4, I was curious about the performance impact of employing full disk encryption. Here are some benchmarks looking at the performance cost to enabling full disk encryption versus not utilizing any disk encryption while running Fedora Workstation on the new ThinkPad P14s Gen 4 AMD laptop.
Google Cloud C3D Shows Great Performance With AMD EPYC Genoa
Back in August Google Cloud announced the C3D instances powered by AMD EPYC 9004 "Genoa" processors while only last week was C3D promoted to general availability. Curious about the performance of C3D after being impressed by AMD EPYC Genoa bare-metal server performance at Phoronix as well as what I've seen with Genoa in the cloud at Microsoft Azure and Amazon EC2 / AWS, here are some benchmarks of the new C3D up against other GCE instances.
And the most popular news for the past month:
Ubuntu Desktop 23.10 ISOs Recalled Due To Malicious User Translations
Hours after the release of Ubuntu 23.10, Canonical has pulled the ISOs and is re-spinning them after user-submitted translations for the Ubuntu installer turned out to contain hate speech.
Six Great Features With The Upcoming Linux 6.6 Kernel
Tomorrow the Linux 6.6 kernel is expected to be released as stable unless Linus Torvalds has last minute reservations and decides to extend the cycle by an extra week. While there were many last minute fixes this week, the changes don't appear to be too scary or invasive. In any event the Linux 6.6 kernel is bringing some exciting features.
Google Proposes New mseal() Memory Sealing Syscall For Linux
Google is proposing a new mseal() memory sealing system call for the Linux kernel. Google intends for this architecture independent system call to be initially used by the Google Chrome web browser on Chrome OS while experiments are underway for use by Glibc in the dynamic linker to seal all non-writable segments at startup.
Glibc Dynamic Loader Hit By A Nasty Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
A nasty vulnerability has been made public today concerning Glibc's dynamic loader that can lead to full root privileges being obtained by local users. This affects Linux distributions of the past two years with the likes of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, 23.04, Fedora 38, and others vulnerable to this local privilege escalation issue.
GNOME Merge Requests Opened That Would Drop X.Org Session Support
A set of merge requests were opened that would effectively drop X.Org (X11) session support for the GNOME desktop and once that code is removed making it a Wayland-only desktop environment.
Unplugging Logitech USB Receivers Has Been Causing The Linux Kernel To Crash
Queued up this week as part of the HID subsystem fixes ahead of today's Linux 6.6-rc6 kernel test release has been a rather embarrassing bug: unplugging Logitech USB receivers has for the past several months been causing the Linux kernel to crash. After a number of bug reports around this issue from unplugging Logitech keyboard/mice receivers to simply switching away on a USB switch with the device(s) attached, the Linux 6.6-rc6 kernel is carrying the fix and it's also marked for back-porting to existing stable Linux kernel series.
AMD Wants To Know If You'd Like Ryzen AI Support On Linux
With the newest AMD Ryzen 7040 series laptops there is "Ryzen AI" as a dedicated AI engine based on Xilinx IP to help accelerate machine learning with the likes of PyTorch and TensorFlow. Sadly though this Ryzen AI with their new Zen 4 laptops is only supported under Microsoft Windows at this point. But it could change with sufficient customer interest.
Valve Releases Proton 8.0-4 As A Big Improvement For Windows Gaming On Linux
Valve has just released Proton 8.0-4 as stable on the Steam client for enhancing the experience for running Windows games on Linux for this Wine-based software that powers Steam Play.
Bcachefs Merged Into The Linux 6.7 Kernel
Less than twenty-four hours after Bcachefs was submitted for Linux 6.7, this new open-source file-system has been successfully merged for this next kernel version.
QLogic 10Gb "QLGE" Ethernet Driver Set To Be Removed From The Linux Kernel
For those that happen to have QLogic 10Gb PCIe Ethernet adapters, the mainline Linux kernel is planning to remove this driver from the kernel source tree unless any active users step-up.
X.Org Hit By New Security Vulnerabilities - Two Date Back To 1988 With X11R2
It was a decade ago that a security researcher commented on X.Org Server security being even "worse than it looks" and that the GLX code for example was "80,000 lines of sheer terror" and hundreds of bugs being uncovered throughout the codebase. In 2023 new X.Org security vulnerabilities continue to be uncovered, two of which were made public today and date back to X11R2 code from the year 1988.
Curl Preps For "Probably The Worst Curl Security Flaw In A Long Time"
The widely-used Curl project as a command-line tool and library for transferring data via a variety of protocols is preparing to roll-out Curl 8.4 early in order to address a particularly nasty vulnerability.
"Open-Source Windows" ReactOS To See Improved GUI Setup/Installation
ReactOS Deutschland e.V. has hired a longtime contributor to this "open-source Windows" project to spend the next five months working on the ReactOS GUI setup mode as an alternative to their classic text-based setup mode.
Debian Repeals The Merged "/usr" Movement Moratorium
Debian 12 had aimed to have a merged "/usr" file-system layout similar to other Linux distributions, but The Debian Technical Committee earlier this year decided to impose a merged-/usr file movement moratorium. But now with Debian 12 having been out for a few months, that moratorium has been repealed.
Linux Looks Toward Dropping Very Old WiFi Drivers
While the Linux kernel tends to keep around drivers for even very old hardware, once there are no known users left that would still be updating to new Linux kernel versions or the drivers pose a significant maintenance burden, it's eventually time to let them go. We've seen the WiMAX wireless code removed and now the latest on the Linux wireless networking side inching close to the chopping block are old WiFi drivers.
Linux 6.7 Reworks PE Header Generation To Reduce Attack Area
One of the many early pull requests sent in for Linux 6.7 were the x86/boot changes that are headlined by a rework to the PE header generation in order to generate a modern, 4K-aligned kernel image view to ultimately aim for better system security.
OpenJDK Merges Intel's x86-simd-sort For Speeding Up Data Sorting 7~15x
Earlier this year Intel posted x86-simd-sort as a blazing fast sorting library that makes use of AVX-512. When the popular Numpy began using it they found up to 10~17x faster sorts for 16-bit to 64-bit data types. Today Intel software engineers released x86-simd-sort 3.0 and it also comes minutes after OpenJDK merged a modified version of this speeding sorting code into that reference JDK codebase.
Linux To Try Again To Disable All RNDIS Protocol Drivers
Several months back was work to disable all Microsoft Remote Network Driver Interface Specification (RNDIS) drivers in the Linux kernel on the basis of being insecure and other factors. That plan of disabling the RNDIS drivers was faced by opposition around concerns of potentially disrupting USB tethering support and the like. It's been months since hearing anything about updated plans for disabling or dropping the RNDIS drivers but the Git branch was updated today for disabling this class of drivers.
Higher Quality AV1 Video Encoding Now Available For Radeon Graphics On Linux
For those making use of GPU-accelerated AV1 video encoding with the latest AMD Radeon graphics hardware on Linux, the upcoming Mesa 23.3 release will support the high-quality AV1 preset for offering higher quality encodes.
AMD Ryzen Powered Framework Laptop Linux Testing Held Up By BIOS Issue
Today the review embargo lifts on the first AMD-powered Framework laptop. There's one of the AMD Framework laptops in the lab for Linux testing and benchmarking but unfortunately no review for launch day due to being held up by a BIOS regression and thus unable to properly utilize accelerated graphics until a new BIOS revision is made available in the coming days.
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