May was another busy month when it comes to Linux hardware and software milestones albeit depressing when looking at the ongoing state of the web/ad industry. In any event there were 25 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles and another 268 original Linux-related news articles all written by your's truly for the month. Here is a look back at what excited Phoronix readers the most during May.

Below is a look at the most popular Linux hardware reviews and Linux/hardware/open-source news article for the month of May. It was a busy month and in the lead-up to Phoronix.com turning 21 years old next week on 5 June... It's been a long journey. Albeit an increasingly difficult one with the overall state of the web publishing / ad industries. If you enjoy the daily original content on Phoronix please consider showing your support via [1]joining Phoronix Premium , disabling any ad-blocker on the site, or tips via [2]PayPal , [3]Square , and [4]Stripe are graciously accepted. With the Phoronix 21st birthday and other exciting hardware/software milestones, June will be exciting at least from a technical standpoint with some exciting benchmarks in the works.

The most popular reviews during May on Phoronix included:

[5]Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Benchmarks On Ubuntu Linux vs. AMD vs. Intel

June 2024 marked the launch of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite to much initial fanfare for finally some compelling ARM laptop designs. While initially -- and still to this day with the likes of the TUXEDO X Elite laptop not materializing yet -- being focused on Windows 11 on ARM, there was hope among Linux users this would lead to a nice ARM Linux laptop experience, since after all Qualcomm and Linaro were working on enhancing the support for Linux. Now approaching the one year point, the overall state of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite support and performance is rather disappointing. Here's a look at where things currently are and performance relative to AMD Ryzen and Intel Core Ultra when making use of the latest Ubuntu Linux support.

[6]Bcachefs, Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS & XFS File-System Performance On Linux 6.15

With the copy-on-write Bcachefs file-system considering its on-disk format now "soft frozen" and nearing the point of potentially removing the "EXPERIMENTAL" flag on it, a number of Phoronix readers have been requesting some fresh benchmarks of this open-source file-system. For your viewing pleasure today are some fresh benchmarks of Bcachefs and other file-systems atop the Linux 6.15 kernel being released as stable later this month. On the benchmarking block today are Bcachefs, Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, and XFS in-tree file-systems.

[7]AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 Linux Benchmarks: Outright Incredible Performance

We finally have AMD's Strix Halo in the lab for benchmarking! HP has kindly sent over their ZBook Ultra 14-inch G1a mobile workstation: it's a beast being powered by the top-end AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 SoC with 16 cores / 32 threads and powerful integrated Radeon 8060S graphics, 128GB of system memory, a nice 14-inch 2.8K display, and other top-end features to provide a dominating laptop powerhouse. In today's article are the very initial benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 Strix Halo SoC under Linux with a focus on the CPU capabilities: a separate article also out today is looking at the AMD Radeon 8060S graphics on Linux.

[8]AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" Delivers Best Performance On Linux Over Windows 11 - Even With Gaming

Now having shown the very strong AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 Linux performance for this "Strix Halo" SoC with Radeon 8060S iGPU for its integrated graphics, you may be wondering on the same hardware how this compares to Microsoft Windows 11. Today's article is looking at the Microsoft Windows 11 Pro performance as shipped by HP on their ZBook Ultra 14 G1a laptop compared to Ubuntu 25.04 with a clean install.

[9]21-Way Intel Core / AMD Ryzen Linux Laptop Comparison On Ubuntu 25.04

As part of fresh re-testing of existing laptops on-hand given the recent release of Ubuntu 25.04 and then also recent Linux reviews of some interesting models like the Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Strix Point and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition, I have been running a lot of Linux laptop benchmarks the past few weeks. I ended up taking things a bit further after those reviews and have now extended it to a 21-way laptop comparison of AMD Ryzen and Intel Core SoCs from the past few generations in looking at their performance on Ubuntu 25.04 across more than 200 benchmarks.

[10]AMD EPYC 4565P & EPYC 4585PX Benchmarks Against Xeon 6369P: EPYC 4005 Champions Entry-Level Server Performance

With today's announcement of the AMD EPYC 4005P "Grado" entry-level server processors, up for review today are the EPYC 4565P and EPYC 4585PX processors as the top-end Zen 5 processors for budget server builds and basic bare metal server hosting. With the prior-generation EPYC 4004 series AMD was already leading over Intel's entry-level Xeon E processors that have become rather embarrassing for the company with its stagnate line-up of low-cost server processors. Now with the AMD EPYC 4005 series, AMD is in an even stronger position and providing a total knock-out to the new Xeon 6300P competition headlined by the Xeon 6369P flagship model.

[11]CachyOS, Clear Linux & Debian 13 Deliver The Best Performance On Framework Laptop 13 With AMD Strix Point

For those that may be upgrading to the new Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" SoCs and curious about hitting the best possible Linux performance, this article is for you. Here is a look at the performance of the Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 across CachyOS, Clear Linux, Debian, Fedora Workstation 42, Manjaro Linux 25.0, openSUSE Tumbleweed, and Ubuntu 25.04.

[12]AMD Ryzen 9 9900 Series Linux Performance Since Launch

After recently looking at how the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" Linux performance has evolved since launch, many Phoronix readers were curious how a similar launch-day vs. now comparison would look on the AMD Zen 5 side. The article today is looking at how the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X Linux performance has evolved since their launch last year. These numbers are put alongside the prior Intel Arrow Lake results for additional context.

[13]AMD Radeon 8060S Linux Graphics Performance With Strix Halo

As shown in today's article the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 Linux performance is incredible with its 16 Zen 5 cores delivering staggering laptop / mobile workstation performance with a 55 Watt default TDP. But that's only half the magic of Strix Halo, with the other aspect being the very capable integrated RDNA 3.5 graphics with unified memory support. Given this being an equally interesting topic for Linux users considering a Strix Halo laptop or desktop, this article is centered around the integrated Radeon 8060S graphics support and performance under Linux.

[14]Full Disk Encryption Performance With Ubuntu 25.04 + Framework Laptop 13 Strix Point

For anyone storing personal information on their laptops especially, I definitely recommend making use of Linux LUKS-based full disk encryption capabilities. I've been recommending going with the full disk encryption capabilities for nearly two decades to help protect personal data in case your laptop is lost or stolen. The performance implications of using full disk encryption have went down over time and in most real-world workloads you'll see minimal to any difference out of it. As it's been a while since running any reference benchmarks looking at no disk encryption to full disk encryption, here are some results on the newly-released Ubuntu 25.04 paired with the Framework Laptop 13 powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point".

And the most popular news article of the month:

[15]Linux Swap Table Code Shows The Potential For Huge Performance Gains

Following recent discussions by Linux kernel developers around integrating swap cache and swap maps functionality with the swap allocator, Swap Table was born. With Swap Tables the hope is for lower memory use, higher performance, dynamic swap allocation and growth, greater extensibility, and other improvements over the existing swap code within the Linux kernel.

[16]Rust Coreutils 0.1 Released With Big Performance Gains - Can Match Or Exceed GNU Speed

With Ubuntu 25.10 planning to ship the Rust-based Coreutils "uutils" by default, it's a big year ahead for this alternative to GNU Coreutils. In furthering along the project's goals, today marks the Rust Coreutils v0.1 release.

[17]KDE Plasma 6.4 Tackles An 18 Year Old Feature Request, More Wayland Protocols Added

The KDE Plasma developer sprint in Graz wrapped up just days ago but there's still been no shortage of new feature work landing into Plasma 6.4 this week. It was another exciting week of feature development as the soft feature freeze approaches for Plasma 6.4.

[18]The Linux Kernel Dropping Its Unused Built-In Software Echo Cancellation Code

Queued up for removal in the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel cycle is dropping "echo", a software-based echo cancellation code within the kernel intended for telecommunications use. But it's old, unmaintained, and likely not actively used.

[19]Linux 6.15 Fix Merged For Sizable Performance Regression On Newer AMD CPUs

At the end of April I reported on a significant performance regression affecting newer AMD CPUs and was bisected to a change in the AMD SRSO mitigation handling for Zen 4/5 processors with the Linux 6.15 kernel. The fix for that significant performance regression was merged today ahead of the imminent Linux 6.15-rc6 release.

[20]Plasma LTS Releases Being Discontinued, Better KDE Telemetry Like Valve's Steam Survey

KDE Plasma open-source developers were meeting the past week in Graz, Austria to plot out fundamental changes and improvements moving forward for this great desktop. Among the changes decided on were ending their practice of Plasma LTS releases, enhancing the telemetry capabilities to be more useful, and more.

[21]EXT4 For Linux 6.16 Brings A Change Yielding "Really Stupendous Performance"

Ted Ts'o sent out the EXT4 file-system changes today for the Linux 6.16 kernel. While EXT4 may not see as much code churn these days given its mature state compared to say Btrfs and Bcachefs, with Linux 6.16 are some tantalizing performance improvements.

[22]Wine 10.7 Brings An Exciting Performance Optimization

Wine 10.7 is out today as the newest bi-weekly release of this open-source software for running Windows games and applications on Linux and other platforms.

[23]KDE Plasma 6.4 Beta Released With Aurorae & KWin-X11

The beta release of the KDE Plasma 6.4 beta desktop is now available for testing ahead of its official release in June.

[24]Firefox Source Code Now Hosted On GitHub

The Mozilla Firefox source code is now officially available on GitHub as they work to transition from their hg.mozilla.org servers.

[25]KDE Plasma Will Now Make Sure Your System Doesn't Suspend When Transferring Files

KDE Plasma 6.4 embarked on its soft feature freeze this week. Thus KDE Plasma developers are now predominantly working on bug fixing and UI polishing for this next open-source desktop release.

[26]Valve Releases Steam Survey Results For April 2025

Like clockwork with the start of the new month comes the updated Steam Survey results from Valve to reflect the latest Linux gaming hardware and software trends.

[27]Servo Browser Engine Now Rendering Gmail & Google Chat, Decides Against AI Contributions

The Servo browser engine project has published a status update outlining some of the enhancements made over the past two months for this Rust-based web layout engine. This includes hitting a notable milestone that some websites like Gmail and Google Chat can now render correctly.

[28]Ubuntu 25.10 Plans To Use sudo-rs By Default For Memory-Safe, Rust-Based sudo

With Ubuntu 25.10 Canonical is planning to make use of more Rust-written system components and so far most of that talk has been about transitioning to Rust Coreutils "uutils" in place of GNU Coreutils. It's also been firmed up today that Canonical is planning on using sudo-rs by default as a replacement to sudo.

[29]Redis 8.0 Released: Now Tri-Licensed With AGPLv3

Last year Redis made the much criticized move to Redis Source Available License v2 and Server Side Public License v1 (SSPL) licensing. The move was widely panned by the open-source community and led to the Linux Foundation forking it as Valkey and also other forks like Redict coming about. In the months since many Linux distributions have switched from Redis to Valkey. Now Redis Labs announced today that with the Redis 8.0 release, they are adding AGPLv3 to the licensing mix.

[30]Linux 6.15 Brings Many Features For Intel & AMD Hardware

With the Linux 6.15 kernel expected to be released as stable on Sunday unless Linus Torvalds has last-minute reservations, here's a look back at some of the most interesting Linux 6.15 changes.

[31]AMD Is Hiring Again To Help Enhance Ryzen On Linux

AMD is once again hiring more Linux engineer(s) to work on their Ryzen client efforts under Linux with next-gen hardware enablement, enhancing features/support for existing Ryzen systems, and related efforts.

[32]NVIDIA Encouraging CUDA Users To Upgrade From Maxwell / Pascal / Volta

NVIDIA CUDA 12.9 is now available as the newest minor feature update to NVIDIA's GPU compute stack. CUDA 12.9 adds compiler targetr support for SM 10.3 and 12.1, compiler support for "family-specific architectures", new NVML counters being exposed, and other minor feature improvements. The NVIDIA CUDA 12.9 documentation is also now more verbose in encouraging anyone still relying on Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta hardware to upgrade.

[33]Linux 6.16 Will Begin Reporting The Cause Of Your AMD Zen System Being Reset/Rebooted

In the event of your AMD Ryzen or EPYC system being randomly reset or unexpectedly rebooted under Linux, the Linux kernel with the upcoming Linux 6.16 cycle is gaining the ability to report the reason for that reset. This is making use of a technical capability found going back to the AMD Zen 1 processors that the Linux kernel is now tapping into for reporting the cause of any previous system reset.

[34]Training Solo: New Set Of Serious Security Vulnerabilities Exposed For Intel & Arm CPUs

The VUSec security researchers are at it again... The embargo is now lifted on another set of of security vulnerabilities affecting Intel processors as well as Arm core designs. This new vulnerability is dubbed Training Solo.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/phoronix-premium

[2] https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EA79CCDLNFJNW

[3] https://square.link/u/brwU0Jq4

[4] https://square.link/u/brwU0Jq4

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x-elite-linux-benchmarks

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-615-filesystems

[7] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-ai-max-pro-395

[8] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-strix-halo-windows-linux

[9] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-linux-2504-laptops

[10] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-epyc-4585px-4565p-benchmarks

[11] https://www.phoronix.com/review/framework-13-amd-linux-2025

[12] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ryzen-9900-linux-2025

[13] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-radeon-8060s-linux

[14] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2504-encryption

[15] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Swap-Table-Patches

[16] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Rust-Coreutils-0.1-Released

[17] https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Plasma-6.4-Starts-May-2025

[18] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Kernel-Dropping-Echo

[19] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.15-Fixes-AMD-Perf

[20] https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Plasma-Graz-Sprint

[21] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-EXT4-Performance

[22] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wine-10.7-Released

[23] https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Plasma-6.4-Beta

[24] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-On-GitHub

[25] https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-No-Suspend-On-Transfer-File

[26] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Survey-April-2025

[27] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Servo-Gmail-Now-Works

[28] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.10-sudo-rs-Default

[29] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Redis-8.0-Goes-AGPLv3

[30] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.15-Features-Reminder

[31] https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Hiring-2025-Ryzen-Linux

[32] https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-CUDA-Upgrade-Post-Volta

[33] https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Report-Previous-Reset-Cause

[34] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Training-Solo-Vulnerability