Coming later today is a large Intel/AMD CPU comparison using the latest Linux 4.15 stable kernel that is mitigated for Spectre and Meltdown and using around two dozen tests. For the high-end Xeon Gold and EPYC servers, I ran close to 200 tests on those platforms.
Hardware News Archives
2,112 Hardware open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.
The EOMA68 computer card project is the open-source hardware effort that aims to be Earth-friendly and allow for interchangeable computer cards that can be installed in laptop housings and other devices. The ambitious concept relying upon ARM SoCs raised more than $170k USD via crowdfunding in 2016 but its lineage dates back to the failed Improv dev board as well as the failed KDE Vivaldi tablet years earlier. It turns out in 2018 there is hope of EOMA68 hardware finally shipping.
Landing a few days ago for the Linux 4.16 kernel merge window was IBM z / s390 mitigation work for Spectre while now the necessary compiler-side changes are also present for the upcoming GCC 8 stable release.
Even IBM System/390 "Linux on z" systems are prone to the Spectre security vulnerability. But with Linux 4.16, s390 is getting its initial Spectre Variant One and Two mitigation.
The KDE community and the Odin Group have announced a new version of the Slimbook, the KDE-branded laptop running Neon. While it's an improvement over last year's model, it's still a tough sell against other laptops/ultrabooks.
With the in-development Linux 4.16 kernel there are improvements to note for both AMD and Intel users.
Darren Hart of VMware's Open-Source Technology Center sent out the platform-drivers-x86 updates today for the Linux 4.16 kernel.
The PCI subsystem updates for the Linux 4.16 kernel are a bit livelier than usual with a number of notable additions.
For those making use of laptop-mode-tools as one of several Linux power saving tools with this one designed to improve Linux laptop battery life, version 1.72 is now available after more than one year of development.
Purism has been supporting both the GNOME and KDE projects with their mobile ambitions and looking to have both desktop environments feature their wares on the in-development Librem 5 smartphone. But as far as the default user experience/interface goes on the Librem 5, they are leaning towards GNOME.
Recently I wrote about Qualcomm's Code Aurora working on Adreno A6xx GPU support and sure enough that has panned out with the initial patch series being posted for this latest-generation Qualcomm GPU architecture.
Jiri Kosina of SUSE has submitted his feature pull requests today for the Linux 4.16 kernel, including the HID subsystem updates.
Tuhi is a new open-source project started by Red Hat's Peter Hutterer and Benjamin Tissoires to support Wacom SmartPad devices on Linux.
Ubuntu-focused Linux PC vendor System76 who has also been working on their own Pop!_OS distribution is looking at enabling disk encryption by default.
Keith Packard who has been doing contract work for Valve the past year on improving the support for virtual reality head-mounted displays (VR HMDs) shares a status update on his work at this week's Linux.Conf.Au in Sydney.
One of the last minute changes sneaking into the Linux 4.15 kernel is support for PDP Xbox One controllers.
Not to be confused with Coreboot or its former name of LinuxBIOS, the Linux Foundation today announced LinuxBoot as a new initiative for replacing system firmware with the Linux kernel/drivers.
The PowerVR Series8XT GT8540 is the latest graphics processor from Imagination Technologies and is designed to drive up to six 4K screens at 60 FPS.
The Qualcomm-aligned Code Aurora is working on supporting the latest-generation Adreno A6xx graphics hardware with the open-source Freedreno+MSM driver stack.
Due to longtime SUSE developer Takashi Iwai going on holiday the next few weeks, he has already sent in the sound driver feature updates targeting the upcoming Linux 4.16 kernel cycle.
If you have been curious about the state of Purism's Librem 5 smartphone project since its successful crowdfunding last year and expedited plans to begin shipping this Linux smartphone in early 2019, the company has issued their first status update.
Yesterday I posted some Linux hardware statistics going back to 2011 using data collected by the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org. Those yearly metrics hadn't contained any GPU/driver data, but here are those numbers.
Here are some Linux hardware and software statistics going back to 2011.
Yesterday I posted some fresh GPU/driver benchmark results for discrete AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards. These were some of the most competitive numbers yet we've seen out of the open-source RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV drivers while using the latest Linux 4.15 kernel, especially for the GTX 1060 vs. RX 580 battle. In the comments were requests to see some CPU utilization numbers, including from one of the Radeon Linux developers, so here is a look at how the CPU usage compares.
Razer's concept device being shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show this year is an Android-powered laptop/hybrid device.
HTC used CES 2018 to announce their new virtual reality head-mounted display, the VIVE Pro.
Just ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Dell has unveiled a new XPS 13 high-end laptop.
Not only is Purism working on their Librem 5 smartphone this year with hopes of still readying the software and hardware for shipping to consumers in 2019, but they are also planning to unveil their tablet this year.
Making the news rounds again is word of Zhaoxin Semiconductor that is jointly owned by VIA working on modern and competitive x86 processors.
The OpenChrome DRM driver continues to largely be developed by one community contributor left standing for supporting VIA x86 graphics on the Linux desktop. These VIA graphics chipsets haven't been too common in about a decade, but OpenChrome continues persevering with working to deliver a full-functioning, open-source driver that VIA itself was never able to produce.
While the Linux kernel has supported the official Sony PlayStation 3 controller as an input device, some of the off-brand/knockoff models haven't quite behaved correctly on Linux but that's now being rectified.
Following the recent Intel Management Engine (ME) vulnerabilities combined with some engineering work the past few months on their end, System76 will begin disabling ME on their laptops.
If you have one of the industrial-grade Intense-PC computers manufactured by CompuLab, there is now mainline Coreboot support!
The HDMI Forum has announced HDMI 2.1 as the latest version of their high definition audio/video interface.
The UPower power management abstraction layer for Linux systems is out with another pre-1.0 release.
Currently if plugging in the HTC Vive for a virtual reality experience on Linux, the head-mounted display (HMD) is treated just as a conventional display. But now with a new set of changes for Linux 4.15, the kernel will know it's a "non-desktop" display.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon has been enjoying its time on Linux 4.15. In addition to the recent boot time tests and kernel power comparison, here are some raw performance benchmarks looking at the speed from Linux 4.10 through Linux 4.15 Git.
In addition to looking at system boot times from Linux 4.6 to Linux 4.15, while doing this kernel testing session on the Lenovo ThinkPad I also took some battery power consumption measurements.
If you are looking out for a SATA 2.5-inch HDD/SSD to USB3 adapter, the Sabrent EC-SS31 is quite simple, works with Linux, supports USB 3.1, and retails for about $10 USD.
More ARM platform upstreaming has taken place for the Linux 4.15 kernel development cycle among other ARM hardware improvements.
The HID and input pull requests have been submitted for the Linux 4.15 kernel merge window.
Canonical has announced that Dell is rolling out five new systems pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux. These systems are catering towards developers and come from all-in-one computers to new laptop models.
In the x86 realm for linux 4.15 are many exciting feature improvements for newer/future Intel and AMD CPUs.
German Phoronix reader Thomas Frech is back with another guest post on the topic of ETH/XMR mining under Linux. This time around he's sharing some power efficiency numbers using a new G-Homa WiFi smart meter. See his past articles in this series here.
Forthcoming POWER9 processors could be a game changer for cryptocurrency mining based upon some preliminary performance data we have received.
Following reports the past few days of Broadcom and Qualcomm potentially hooking up, Broadcom just filed their offer today to try to buy up Qualcomm for $103 billion USD.
The Linux-friendly folks at CompuLab have just announced their newest industrial-grade, fanless PC: the fitlet2.
Details are very scarce on the new Qualcomm "Saphira" processor, but initial support for it was added this week to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).
Two developers from the Pengutronix embedded Linux company out of Germany presented at this week's Embedded Linux Conference in Europe. There they talked about zero-copy video streaming on embedded systems, and as part of that, the Etnaviv open-source graphics driver.
Tomorrow marks the end of the crowdfunding campaign for Purism's Librem 5 smartphone campaign.
2112 Hardware news articles published on Phoronix.