Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

GIMP 3.2 Will Aim To Be Out Within One Year Of GIMP 3.0
GIMP 3.2 Will Aim To Be Out Within One Year Of GIMP 3.0
2 Hours Ago - Free Software - GIMP 3.2 One Year After GIMP 3.0 - 5 Comments

Following the GIMP 3.0-RC1 tagging, the GIMP project has now put out their lengthy write-up outlining many of the new features to enjoy with this first release candidate of the much anticipated GIMP 3.0. Plus there is a few words about future releases when moving past the upcoming GIMP 3.0 stable.

Fresh Take On Linux Uncached Buffered I/O "RWF_UNCACHED" Nets 65~75% Improvement
Fresh Take On Linux Uncached Buffered I/O "RWF_UNCACHED" Nets 65~75% Improvement
3 Hours Ago - Linux Storage - RWF_UNCACHED - 2 Comments

Linux I/O expert and block/IO_uring maintainer Jens Axboe of Meta has recently revisited his patches around uncached buffered I/O. Back in 2019 the "RWF_UNCACHED" effort was started by Axboe to address a throughput cliff in performance once the page cache fills up. That work faded away but Axboe recently took to crafting a set of fresh patches for implementing uncached buffered I/O and they are showing extremely promising results.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Linux Performance: Zen 5 With 3D V-Cache
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Linux Performance: Zen 5 With 3D V-Cache
10 Hours Ago - Processors - 30 Comments

Ahead of tomorrow's availability of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor as the first Zen 5 CPU released with 3D V-Cache, today the review embargo lifts. Here is a look at how this 8-core / 16-thread Zen 5 CPU with 64MB of 3D V-Cache is performing under Ubuntu Linux compared to a variety of other Intel Core and AMD Ryzen desktop processors.

5 November

Power Determinism Mode Still Proves Beneficial For AMD EPYC 9005 Performance
Power Determinism Mode Still Proves Beneficial For AMD EPYC 9005 Performance
5 November 03:25 PM EST - Processors - 1 Comment

Typically in my launch-day Linux reviews of new AMD EPYC processors I try to include results both of the performance determinism (default) and power determinism modes available with these server processors since opting in to the power determinism mode can allow for additional performance uplift at the cost of slightly higher power costs. With the AMD EPYC 9575F / 9755 / 9965 benchmarks and review I didn't have a chance to complete all of the power determinism runs in time for that review, but for those curious about power vs. performance determinism modes with the 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin" processors, here is a side-by-side comparison.

Linux 6.13 To Enhance Logic For Trusting Built-In Thunderbolt Controllers
Linux 6.13 To Enhance Logic For Trusting Built-In Thunderbolt Controllers
5 November 06:14 AM EST - Hardware - Thunderbolt - 12 Comments

Due to the possibility of DMA attacks from connected Thunderbolt devices, Linux and other platforms have built up safeguards over the years and different security levels for Thunderbolt to better protect systems having this high speed interface exposing PCIe. With the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel, the logic of the kernel is being enhanced to better detect and trust built-in Thunderbolt controllers.

4 November

Intel Panther Lake Display Support Squeezing Into Linux 6.13
Intel Panther Lake Display Support Squeezing Into Linux 6.13
4 November 08:24 PM EST - Intel - Panther Lake Display - Add A Comment

Queued up over the past month into DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.13 kernel cycle has been initial support for Xe3 graphics to be found with Panther Lake processors. The initial Xe3 graphics driver support patches have been trickling in while the final drm-intel-next pull ahead of the Linux 6.13 merge window has readied support for actually being able to light up a display connected to Xe3 LPD graphics with Panther Lake.

Intel Releases x86-simd-sort 6.0 For Speedy AVX2/AVX-512 Sorting, PyTorch Now Using It
Intel Releases x86-simd-sort 6.0 For Speedy AVX2/AVX-512 Sorting, PyTorch Now Using It
4 November 02:02 PM EST - Intel - x86-simd-sort 6.0 - 2 Comments

The x86-simd-sort project from Intel has been an interesting open-source software effort for much faster number sorting by using AVX-512. There's been lightning fast number sorting with AVX-512 and AVX2 code paths also added to broaden the appeal in helping CPUs without AVX-512. Projects like Numpy have been making use of this library while today x86-simd-sort 6.0 was released and also comes a few days after PyTorch has begun using this library too.

TOUPUWAN 30-Slot Laptop/Tablet Storage Cart
TOUPUWAN 30-Slot Laptop/Tablet Storage Cart
4 November 01:57 PM EST - Peripherals - 12 Comments

To clear up the ever-growing stack of laptops, I recently bought a TOUPUWAN 30-Slot Laptop/Tablet Storage Cart. This laptop/tablet storage cart can accommodate 32 devices in total while slots for up to 30 laptops/tablets 16.3-inches in size. It does have built-in power strips as well to easily facilitate charging of the devices while securely stored away but for my purposes I was just looking for something to better organize the mess of laptops I only occasionally pull out when running new Linux laptop benchmarks.

AMD Posts New Linux Mitigation Handling For SRSO/Inception
AMD Posts New Linux Mitigation Handling For SRSO/Inception
4 November 06:17 AM EST - AMD - Speculative Return Stack Overflow - Add A Comment

AMD Linux engineer Borislav Petkov kicked off the new week by volleying a patch for adjusting the Speculative Return Stack Overflow (SRSO, a.k.a. "Inception") vulnerability mitigation handling for capabilities to be found with affected processors running on newer CPU microcode.

CachyOS Explores Optimizing Its Kernel With AutoFDO
CachyOS Explores Optimizing Its Kernel With AutoFDO
4 November 05:55 AM EST - Arch Linux - CachyOS + AutoFDO Kernel - 11 Comments

CachyOS continues to be a fascinating Arch Linux based distribution that pushes the boundaries of out-of-the-box performance with a variety of patches, optimization techniques, specialized package builds, and more. One of the latest areas they are exploring is making use of AutoFDO for their kernel builds.

3 November

Nice Performance Gains With SVT-AV1 2.3 Encoding On The System76 Thelio Astra
Nice Performance Gains With SVT-AV1 2.3 Encoding On The System76 Thelio Astra
3 November 06:26 AM EST - Arm - SVT-AV1 v2.3 - 3 Comments

With this week's release of SVT-AV1 2.3 for open-source AV1 encoding citing significant performance improvements for running on ARM, I was eager to see how well this AV1 encoder would be performing on the new System76 Thelio Astra ARM developer desktop powered by Ampere Altra. Here are some benchmarks showing those big speed-ups for ARM-based AV1 encoding.

Snapdragon X1 Elite CPUFreq Support Revised In Latest Linux Patches
Snapdragon X1 Elite CPUFreq Support Revised In Latest Linux Patches
3 November 05:58 AM EST - Arm - Snapdragon X1 Elite CPUFreq - 6 Comments

While the mainline Linux kernel has begun seeing initial support for various Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops, various feature limitations are outstanding before these Qualcomm-powered laptops really become usable for daily use. For instance, just a few days ago the audio firmware was finally upstreamed to make setting up X1 Elite laptops easier. Another important feature as an example is CPUFreq driver support for CPU frequency scaling to ensure optimal performance and power efficiency.

2 November

1 November

Wine 10.0 Release Plans Aim For Mid-January Release
1 November 01:28 PM EDT - WINE - Wine 10.0 Release Plans - 11 Comments

Wine project leader Alexandre Julliard has laid out plans for releasing Wine 10.0 around mid-January as the annual stable release for this open-source software to run Windows applications and games on Linux and other platforms.

Ubuntu's Great Mainline Kernel PPA Hasn't Been Working Since Mid-September
1 November 11:54 AM EDT - Ubuntu - Sad Face - 33 Comments

One of the very convenient features for Ubuntu Linux users who want to run the very newest upstream kernel releases or simply test a new kernel build for verifying bug fixes or functionality has been the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA. It's been around for years, backed by Canonical, and very convenient for fetching pre-built AArch64 / ARM / POWER / RISC-V / x86_64 kernel binaries as Debian packages... With options of stable/test kernel versions as well as daily packages. Sadly, it's been broken once again and has been in that manner since mid-September.

New Intel Diamond Rapids Patch For GCC Confirms AVX10.2-512, APX & Other ISA Features
1 November 07:00 AM EDT - Intel - -march=diamondrapids - 6 Comments

Intel software engineers have been very busy recently with upstreaming various elements of support into the Linux kernel, open-source compilers and more for the next-generation Xeon Diamond Rapids processors. Following the recent GCC prep patches for Diamond Rapids to work on the ISA additions around AMX-AVX512, AMX-FP8, AMX-FP32, and others, a new patch was posted today for actually exposing the "-march=diamondrapids" compiler target and in turn confirming all of the new ISA capabilities.

Intel Arrow Lake, AMD EPYC Turin & Linux Kernel Drama Made For An Interesting October
1 November 06:34 AM EDT - Phoronix - October Highlights - 2 Comments

October is now in the books after writing 247 original news articles and another 24 Linux hardware reviews / featured multi-page benchmark articles. From the launches of Intel Arrow Lake and AMD EPYC 9005 to other interesting new hardware, the Russian Linux kernel drama, Linux 6.12 developments and early Linux 6.13 patches queuing in "-next" branches, October was an interesting month both for hardware and open-source software.

Ubuntu Hoping To Remove Qt 5 Before Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
1 November 06:24 AM EDT - Ubuntu - Moving To Qt 6 - 50 Comments

Ubuntu developer Simon Quigley laid out the plans for hoping Ubuntu packages will move from Qt 5 to Qt 6 so that by the time of the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS cycle in early 2026 that the older version of this graphical toolkit can be removed.

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