Hardware News Archives


2,112 Hardware open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

BMW Continues Making Great Progress With Linux

In recent years we have seen prominent automobile manufacturer BMW engaging more with open-source and Linux. At this week's Open-Source Summit Europe / Embedded Linux Conference Europe they talked more about their increasing usage of Linux from their assembly line to within automobiles.

2 November 2019 - BMW + Linux - 28 Comments
Google Plumbing The Linux Support For Privacy Screens On Intel Laptops

A number of recent laptops have begun appearing that offer support for built-in privacy screens with the press of a button. These privacy screens reduce much of the visible light when viewed at angles to try to block out the screen contents from anyone that may be sitting besides the user. Linux has finally begun seeing this support prepared.

23 October 2019 - DRM Privacy Screen Property - 17 Comments
Purism Provides Update On Librem 5 Shipping, Known Issues

Following the closure of Librem 5 initial "Aspen" batch shipping window and it coming out that the devices were just sent to employees/insiders, Purism has now provided more information on the shipping windows ahead and known issues.

23 October 2019 - Librem 5 Updates - 44 Comments
MSM+Freedreno Driver Stack Adding Support For The Adreno 510 GPU

While the MSM+Freedreno open-source graphics driver stack already supports the Adreno 500 and 600 series, one of the GPUs not seeing support until now was the basic Adreno 510. Kernel patches are pending for A510 enablement while the Mesa support was already merged.

20 October 2019 - Adreno 510 - 5 Comments
Linux Returns To Parallel CPU Microcode Updates To Reduce Cloud Disruption

Following the Spectre mitigations coming to light last year, the late microcode update process for CPUs was serialized. However, this has led to complaints from cloud vendors and other customers with large core count servers where downtime/disruptions need to be minimal. So now the CPU microcode update process is being parallelized again.

4 October 2019 - Parallel Microcode Updates - 11 Comments
Linux 5.4 Dropping Support For The Itanium IA64-Powered SGI Altix

While Linux 5.4 is bringing a new driver to help SGI systems back to their Origin boxes, this kernel meanwhile dropping support for the SGI Altix that is newer than the some of the Origin systems. SGI Altix being removed from the Linux kernel is the latest in the path for winding down Itanium (IA64) support.

17 September 2019 - No More SGI Altix - 2 Comments
Linux 5.4 Bringing Support For Lenovo's "PrivacyGuard" On Newer ThinkPads

Newer high-end Lenovo ThinkPad laptops feature an option called "PrivacyGuard" for restricting the usable vertical and horizontal viewing angles of the LCD display, similar to what has been achievable previously using film covers and the like. With Linux 5.4 this feature will be supported by the kernel if concerned about others looking over your shoulders at your screen, etc.

13 September 2019 - Lenovo ThinkPad PrivacyGuard - 7 Comments
Turbostat Utility Sees Late Updates In Linux 5.3

The Turbostat utility that lives within the Linux kernel source tree for reporting various power/frequency metrics on x86_64 processors saw some late updates merged last weekend for the upcoming Linux 5.3 kernel.

6 September 2019 - Turbostat - Add A Comment
Librem 5 Will Begin Shipping In The Weeks Ahead, But Varying Quality Over Months Ahead
Librem 5 Will Begin Shipping In The Weeks Ahead, But Varying Quality Over Months Ahead

As we approach the end of Q3, Purism has been quiet whether they will make their revised target of shipping the Librem 5 Linux smartphone this quarter after passing their original plan to ship at the start of 2019. Well, Purism has just published an update and they will begin shipping the phones in batches beginning at the end of the month but the quality isn't yet up to scratch.

5 September 2019 - Librem 5 - 102 Comments
PinePhone Remains On Track For Shipping In The Months Ahead

The open-source minded PinePhone is sitll on track for shipping in the months ahead and its software side is coming along nicely with the ability to run UBports Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish OS, postmarketOS, KDE Plasma Mobile, and other options.

5 September 2019 - PinePhone September Update - 12 Comments
NAS Parallel Benchmarks: EPYC 7601 vs. EPYC 7742 vs. Xeon Platinum 8280

Not included as part of our original EPYC 7742 / EPYC 7002 "Rome" Linux benchmarks was the NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) developed by NASA. While an MPI testing favorite, there were build issues with the older version of NPB packaged by the Phoronix Test Suite. But with recently having updated that test profile against the latest NPB upstream, here are some results for the EPYC 7742 2P, EPYC 7601 2P, and dual Xeon Platinum 8280 benchmark results. Separately, there's also results now for NeatBench 5 with this video editing plug-in test case now part of the Phoronix Test Suite.

4 September 2019 - NPB Benchmarks - 7 Comments
UPower 0.99.11 Released As v1.0 Remains Elusive

UPower is the abstraction layer around batteries and other power devices on Linux. Even with it being years since it was known as DeviceKit-power and seeing many 0.99 updates, the UPower 1.0 release isn't there yet but at least UPower 0.99.11 is now available as their first release since February.

3 September 2019 - UPower 0.99.11 - 3 Comments
Purism Shows Off First Shots Of The Librem 5 Smartphone's PCB
Purism Shows Off First Shots Of The Librem 5 Smartphone's PCB

The Librem 5 smartphone is still advertised as shipping in Q3'2019 though it looks next to impossible with just one month left in the quarter. Purism CTO Nicole Faerber presented at CCC's Camp 2019 and the phone wasn't demoed but pictures of the Librem 5 PCB were on display.

28 August 2019 - Librem 5 - 29 Comments
Logic Supply Announces Karbon 700 Rugged Linux PC With Core / Xeon CPU Options
Logic Supply Announces Karbon 700 Rugged Linux PC With Core / Xeon CPU Options

Earlier this summer we checked out the Logic Supply Karbon 300 as a well-built and very durable Linux-friendly PC for low-power environments. That Karbon 300 came equipped with a low-power Apollo Lake Atom processor while today the company announced the Karbon 700 with higher-wattage Core and Xeon CPU options for high performance IoT / edge computing.

27 August 2019 - Karbon 700 - 6 Comments
Librem 5 August Update - More Software Progress, No Word On Q3 Shipping

Purism has published their latest monthly update on the status of their Librem 5 Linux smartphone. They continue bringing up the software stack and tweaking the kernel support, but no word on their finalized hardware design nor if they still plan to ship in Q3'2019 as they continue advertising.

21 August 2019 - Librem 5 Smartphone - 18 Comments
System76 Still Aiming To Be The Apple Of The Linux Space With Software & Hardware

System76 continues doing much more work on software these days as well as expanding their own hardware manufacturing capabilities. This is much more than they did a decade or even several years ago when they were just selling PCs/laptops pre-loaded with Ubuntu. As summed up by System76 founder and CEO, Carl Richell, their end game is much more Apple-esque.

19 August 2019 - System76 Software + Hardware - 64 Comments
System76 Unveils Their Firmware Manager Project For Graphically Updating Firmware

While most major hardware vendors have been adopting LVFS+Fwupd for firmware updating on Linux, Linux PC vendor System76 has notably been absent from the party for a variety of reasons. Today they announced their new Firmware Manager project that bridges the gap between their lack of LVFS support and their own hosted firmware service.

17 August 2019 - System76 Firmware Manager - 47 Comments
Etnaviv Is Packing Code For An Exciting Linux 5.4 Cycle

While Freedreno and Panfrost have been steaming ahead when it comes to open-source, reverse-engineered graphics for Arm SoCs, the Etnaviv project for targeting Vivante graphics hasn't had too much to report on recently. Fortunately, that's changing as coming up for the Linux 5.4 cycle they have a lot of new code to introduce.

16 August 2019 - Open-Source Vivante - 2 Comments

2112 Hardware news articles published on Phoronix.