Computers Linux Reviews & Articles

There have been 222 Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles on Phoronix for computers. Separately, check out our news section for related product news.

I spent the past few weeks testing the latest System76 Pangolin laptop that has been working out well as an all-AMD 15-inch laptop running the company's increasingly-popular Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

With an 8-core Rockchip RK3588S SoC, the Orange Pi 5 is leaps and bounds faster than the aging Raspberry Pi 4. With up to 32GB of RAM, the Orange Pi 5 is also capable of serving for a more diverse user-base and even has enough potential for assembling a budget Arm Linux developer desktop. I've been testing out the Orange Pi 5 the past few weeks and it's quite fast and nice for its low price point.

One of the new features introduced with Linux 6.2 is Call Depth Tracking and it can help extend the useful service life of Intel Skylake through Coffeelake era processors in providing better performance than is otherwise found out-of-the-box on Linux.

Last week I published initial Apple M2 vs. AMD Rembrandt vs. Intel Alder Lake Linux benchmarks using Asahi Linux and Arch Linux across the board. For ending out this week, here is a follow-up article looking more closely at the Apple M2 in the MacBook Air against the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U "Rembrandt" within the Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen3. This time around are also results from performance tweaks to each laptop for the CPUFreq governor and platform profile.

Given the significant interest from Phoronix readers about how well Apple M2 performs on Linux, especially after it was noted Linus Torvalds using an Apple MacBook Air M2, here are the first of many benchmark articles to come looking at how well Apple's M2 performs under Linux against Intel/AMD x86_64 competition. The new Apple MacBook Air with M2 was benchmarked for this article against the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U "Rembrandt" Zen 3+, Intel Core i7 1280P "Alder Lake P", an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX "Cezanne H", and also for reference an Apple Mac Mini M1 model. All of these laptops were tested under Arch Linux (x86_64) and the Arch-based Asahi Linux (M1/M2).

I've begun testing the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U "Rembrandt" SoC under Linux and have some preliminary benchmarks of this Zen 3+ chip up against a variety of Intel and AMD notebooks on hand. Here is the first of several articles looking at the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U Linux performance using a Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen3.

Earlier this week Linux security researcher Matthew Garrett shared that Lenovo's newer AMD Rembrandt laptops with Microsoft's Pluton security co-processor would not boot Linux by default. The issue stems from the third-party UEFI certificate not being enabled by default and it turns out is something Microsoft is seemingly now enforcing. Fortunately, I had a Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen3 with Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U on the way and so was now able to test this experience under Linux.

With the very popular HP Dev One that is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO SoC and running Pop!_OS, a number of Phoronix readers inquired about seeing benchmarks of some of the alternative kernel flavors on the device. So here is a look at the stock Linux 5.17 kernel up against the Linux 5.18 and 5.19 (Git) kernels and then Liquorix and XanMod tossed in as alternative flavors running on the Pop!_OS 22.04 installation.

Back in March the folks at OnLogic announced the Factor 201 as a Raspberry Pi CM4 (Compute Module 4) fitted for industrial use-cases like IoT gateways and more. The past few weeks I have been testing out this Raspberry Pi powered device and indeed it opens the door for using the Raspberry Pi within more harsh and demanding environments.

Earlier this month marked the launch of the HP Dev One as an interesting collaboration between HP and System76 for a laptop optimized for Linux developers and running System76's Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS operating system. It's a very interesting laptop and well thought out for Linux use with an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U SoC and integrated Radeon graphics for satisfying the preferences of many Linux developers preferring a fully open-source driver stack. Thanks to the large scale manufacturing of HP, it's also a competitively-priced Linux laptop compared to many of the Linux laptops from smaller vendors that are based on Clevo or other white box laptop designs.

Bavarian PC vendor TUXEDO Computers that specializes in various Linux pre-loaded notebooks and desktop computers recently launched their Aura 15 Gen2 laptop focused on being an "affordable business allrounder" and powered by AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors with integrated Vega graphics to make for a nice open-source driver experience. TUXEDO sent over the Aura 15 Gen2 for a round of testing and here's a look at this Ubuntu Linux laptop's performance and capabilities.

Over the past nearly 18 years of running Phoronix, I have come across many interesting Linux-based products from Linux embedded in motherboards for instant-on use to the BlackDog USB port pen drive Linux servers to solar-powered super-computers in trash cans. The most fun and promising Linux-powered gaming device for the masses though is launching today: Valve's Steam Deck. I've been fortunate to be testing out this Arch Linux derived handheld game console the past month and it has been working out very well -- both as a portable Steam gaming device but making it even more compelling from the Linux enthusiast angle is its "developer mode" that effectively turns it into a general Linux handheld and also being free to load your own Linux distribution of choice.

Yesterday Google Cloud launched their C2D instance type as their newest compute-optimized instances powered by AMD EPYC 7003 series processors. here are some quick benchmarks looking at the C2D performance against the existing Intel Xeon powered C2 instance type and the former EPYC 7002 based N2D instance type.

When it comes to small form factor (SFF) industrial PCs and IoT computers, it's been an area where Intel has traditionally dominated and served quite well. But now with the continued success of AMD's Ryzen processors, we are beginning to see more AMD-powered industrial computer solutions become available such as the recent OnLogic ML100 series with AMD SoC options. I've been testing out the OnLogic ML100G-41 powered by a Ryzen 7 4800U SoC for many weeks now and this fanless, industrial-grade computer has been running very well for a diverse variety of workloads.

The long time Phoronix reader, with an excellent long-term memory, may remember an odd article from back in August 2017 on buying a passively cooled computer. It tells the tale of the consumer who decided to buy a rather niche, fanless, therefore passively cooled computer.

Next month marks two years since AMD introduced the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X 64-core / 128-thread processor. All of our testing of the 3990X on Linux over the past two years has been with the System76 Thelio Major, which continues holding up well with that US-assembled workstation with hand-crafted enclosure from Colorado. With System76 having recently released Pop!_OS 21.10 as the latest update to their Ubuntu Linux derived operating system and upcoming two year anniversary of the 3990X, it made for an interesting time to see how the performance of the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X and Radeon RX 5700 XT within that workstation has evolved.

At the end of October came the pleasant surprise of the introduction of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. This drop-in replacement to the original Raspberry Pi Zero features a more powerful 1.0GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 compared to the miniscule 1GHz single-core design of the original Pi Zero while boasting 512MB of LPDDR2 RAM. Here are some initial benchmarks of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for those curious about its performance.

While many Linux users were excited years ago around EOMA68 and in part the possibility of an open, upgradeable laptop design, it has yet to ship and looking like it never will -- not to mention being very outdated specifications by today's standards. Entirely unrelated to that prior upgradeable hardware effort but continuing in similar goals is The Framework Laptop. The Framework Laptop is a thin, upgradeable notebook that is Linux-friendly and allows the user to easily upgrade their own components. I was testing The Framework Laptop for a while and from the hardware perspective is a very nice device and running well under Linux.

With the in-development Linux 5.15 kernel there is now support for ACPI Platform Profiles on supported ASUS laptops. This ASUS laptop platform profile support joins the likes of HP, Dell, and Lenovo laptops already having this support exposed under Linux that allows users to control their power/performance preference. Here are some tests with the ASUS ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage laptop with the platform profile options under Linux 5.15.

A few weeks ago I finally received the HiFive Unmatched from SiFive as their flagship RISC-V development board. As a reminder this is their mini-ITX development board that is powered by their U740 SoC and features 16GB of DDR4 system memory, one PCI Express x16 slot that can work with AMD Radeon graphics cards on Linux, and other features. It's been a delight playing with this developer platform and enclosed are some early benchmarks as well showing off the U740 performance as well as how the Linux software support/performance has been evolving.

This summer we have been testing the Tyan Transport CX GC68B8036-LE as one of the company's newest options for those in the market for an AMD EPYC 7003 "Milan" 1U 1P barebones server. Across our wide range of Linux and BSD benchmarking this Tyan Transport CX GC68B8036-LE with Tyan S8036GM2NE motherboard has been holding up well and meeting our requirements and proven reliability in having tested Tyan products now at Phoronix for over the past 16 years.

Most Linux distributions including the likes of Ubuntu and Fedora have been shipping Intel's Thermald daemon the past few years as it's important to achieving good thermal/power behavior on modern Intel SoCs. For those curious about its impact, here are some benchmarks carried out with Intel Thermald or not when using an Intel Core i7 1185G7 Tiger Lake notebook.

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500U with six cores / twelve threads within a Lenovo laptop at $449 USD is quite a steal. This is also my first time benchmarking the AMD Ryzen 5 5500U after waiting months on Ryzen 5000 series laptop availability. Here are some initial benchmarks of the Ryzen 5 5500U under Ubuntu 21.04 Linux against various other Intel/AMD laptops.

The HP ZBook Studio G7 aims to attract Linux developers and data scientists by not only offering a powerful hardware combination and by pre-loading Ubuntu 20.04 LTS but in also shipping a variety of tools and other software packages pre-configured for a modern developer and data scientist workload. We have been testing the HP ZBook Studio G7 for the better part of two months for this Linux-loaded mobile workstation and in this article is a look at this new HP device along with plenty of benchmarks, including Windows vs. Linux performance tests and more.

For those either needing a well-built, fanless computer that can run fine as a Linux desktop or are looking for an industrial-rated edge computing system, the Helix 500 is an interesting product from OnLogic (formerly, Logic Supply) that fills the space for a dependable, petite PC and ships with Windows, Linux, or even no OS at all if just preferring to load your own operating system of choice.

SiFive in cooperation with Tynker and BBC Learning have launched a Doctor Who themed HiFive Inventor Coding Kit. This Initial HiFive Inventor Coding Kit is intended to help kids as young as seven years of age get involved with computer programming through a variety of fun exercises and challenges involving the RISC-V powered mini computer and related peripherals like LED lighting and speaker control.

Given the recent Intel presentation alleging AMD Ryzen laptop performance being worse on battery relative to the AC vs. battery performance seen with Intel EVO notebooks featuring Tiger Lake processors, I ran a mini comparison on my side to see whether there is any merit to Intel's information when testing under Ubuntu Linux.

For those curious about the hardware potential out of Apple's in-house M1 processor powering new Mac Book Pros and Mac Mini, for the past week we have been running benchmarks of this ARM-based processor and have a number of benchmarks to share today looking at how the performance compares to prior Intel-powered Macs along with the Rosetta 2.0 performance for running x86_64 binaries on ARMv8.

Cincoze is a brand we previously haven't tested at Phoronix but is a Taiwanese manufacturer of embedded computers. The company's recently introduced GM-1000 is advertised as a "Machine Vision Embedded Computer" geared for a variety of industrial applications in being constructed within a well engineered aluminum enclosure that is fan-less thanks to an array of heatpipes and chassis serving as a heatsink while offering MXM-based GPU expansion and a total system power budget of up to 360 Watts.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is today announcing a new and unexpected single board computer: the Raspberry Pi 400. It's more of a single-keyboard computer that offers slightly higher performance than the Raspberry Pi 4.