Phoronix has made it another year. Today marks 21 years since I started Phoronix.com with a focus on providing Linux hardware reviews. Linux hardware support is a night and day difference then to today as is the overall ecosystem with all the major hardware vendors these days having some -- often significant -- levels of interest in Linux support. No longer is it typically a worry of whether your mouse, 56K modem, WiFi adapter, or other basic peripherals working but most often just a matter of how well the performance is on Linux, whether there is LVFS/Fwupd firmware updating support, and if other non-show-stopping features are supported. We still haven't managed the "year of the Linux desktop" but it's been wild with Chrome OS and Android being based on Linux, Linux coming to dominate the server world, Linux being ubiquitous to cloud computing, and Valve revolutionizing the Linux gaming space.

During the past 21 years on Phoronix there have been more than 46,800 original open-source/Linux-related news articles published and more than 5,400 original Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured articles. 99% of which have been written by myself -- primarily due to the challenging economic environment for the Linux desktop/hardware niche.

These days we get to enjoy most consumer hardware supported out-of-the-box before launch on Linux, Microsoft is even a major contributor to the Linux kernel and other open-source software, Mesa graphics drivers have become a huge success stories, open-source GPU drivers have become a striking reality from multiple hardware vendors, there no longer is having to deal with ndiswrapper or similar for WiFi support, vendors aggressively optimize Linux for performance thanks to servers/HPC, and there is just so much more to list for how the Linux hardware ecosystem has improved so much over the past two plus decades. Linux/open-source software at large is also much improved over the years.

While Linux hardware support is tremendously better over the past two plus decades and much broader OEM/ODM support as well as more significant Linux use across all areas, sadly, the web advertising and web publishing space hasn't improved and worse than the early years. With the rampant use of ad-blockers, companies focusing their ad buys on the likes of YouTube and Facebook and other social networks and video content, and not many organizations interested in advertising exclusively to our Linux desktop-focused-primarily audience, this remains the biggest pain point and struggle with each passing year. It jives with similar burdens faced by community-oriented open-source maintainers. And it's a daily pain but I remain passionately stubborn about Linux hardware.

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Thanks for your reading and support for the past 21 years of covering Linux hardware on Phoronix. In marking the day, here is a look back at the most popular Linux hardware reviews/benchmark articles since the last Phoronix birthday:

[5]AMD Ryzen 9 9950X & Ryzen 9 9900X Deliver Excellent Linux Performance

Last Wednesday was the review embargo for the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X Zen 5 desktop processors that proved to be very exciting for Linux workloads from developers to creators to AVX-512 embracing AI and HPC workloads. Today the review embargo lifts on the Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X and as expected given the prior 6-core/8-core tests: these new chips are wild! The Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X are fabulous processors for those engaging in heavy real-world Linux workloads with excellent performance uplift and stunning power efficiency.

[6]AMD Ryzen 5 9600X & Ryzen 7 9700X Offer Excellent Linux Performance

This could quite well be my simplest review in the past twenty years of Phoronix. The AMD Ryzen 9000 series starting with the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X launching tomorrow are some truly great desktop processors. The generational uplift is very compelling, even in single-threaded Linux workloads shooting ahead of Intel's 14th Gen Core competition, across nearly 400 benchmarks these new Zen 5 desktop CPUs impress, and these new Zen 5 desktop processors are priced competitively. I was already loving the Ryzen 7000 series performance on Linux with its AVX-512 implementation and performing so well across hundreds of different Linux workloads but now with the AMD Ryzen 9000 series, AMD is hitting it out of the ball park. That paired with the issues Intel is currently experiencing for the Intel Core 13th/14th Gen CPUs and the ~400 benchmark results makes this a home run for AMD on the desktop side with only some minor Linux caveats.

[7]Intel Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" Delivers Strong Linux Performance

Earlier this month Intel announced the Core Ultra 200S "Arrow Lake" processors and today they go on sale. In turn, the review embargo also lifts for these new desktop processors. Up first today on Phoronix is the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Linux performance review for this flagship 24-core desktop processor.

[8]AMD EPYC 9755 / 9575F / 9965 Benchmarks Show Dominating Performance

Last month Intel introduced their Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids" processors with up to 128 P cores, MRDIMM support, and other improvements as a big step-up in performance and power efficiency for their server processors. The Xeon 6900P series showed they could tango with the AMD EPYC 9004 Genoa/Bergamo processors in a number of areas, but Genoa has been around since November 2022... With today's AMD 5th Gen EPYC "Turin" launch, Zen 5 is coming to servers and delivers stunning performance and power efficiency. The new top-end AMD EPYC Turin processor performance can obliterate the competition in most workloads and delivers a great generational leap in performance and power efficiency. Here are our first 5th Gen AMD EPYC Turin benchmarks in looking at the EPYC 9575F, EPYC 9755, and EPYC 9965 processors across many workloads and testing in both single and dual socket configurations.

[9]Apple M4 Mac Mini With macOS vs. Intel / AMD With Ubuntu Linux Performance

Apple last week released their latest iMac, Mac Mini, and MacBook Pro products powered by their fourth-generation M-series Apple Silicon. The new Mac Mini in particular is interesting for under $600 starting out with the all re-designed Mac Mini with 10-core M4 and now the base model having 16GB of memory. It will take some time before there is any reasonable Linux support on the M4 hardware with Asahi Linux, but for those curious about how the M4 Mac Mini with macOS compares to AMD Ryzen and Intel Core CPUs under Linux, here are some preliminary benchmarks.

[10]Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 24.04 Linux Performance For The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X

With all of my AMD Ryzen 9900X and 9950X Linux benchmarking and Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X reviews as well, many have wondered if AMD Zen 5 is just really great on Linux, if Windows 11 is in particularly poor shape for these new AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors, if it's just the different/diverse benchmarks being run, or simply why are these new desktop CPUs running so well on Linux but less so with Windows?

[11]Intel Continues To Show AMD The Importance Of Software Optimizations: 16% More Ryzen 9 9950X Performance

As part of my ongoing AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Linux testing, last week I provided a look at the AVX-512 benefits to Zen 5 and also the Windows vs. Linux performance for the Ryzen 9 9950X. For sharing today is a look at multiple Linux distributions up and running on the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) desktop. Among the distributions in the mix are Intel's Clear Linux distribution that is optimally tuned for maximum x86_64 Linux performance and once again even on AMD hardware shows the significant benefits to a well-tuned Linux software stack.

[12]AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370: 100+ Benchmarks Validate Zen 5's Captivating Power Efficiency & Performance

With the AMD Zen 5 generation, the timing is interesting where it's not the desktop processors launching first but happens to be in the form of AMD Ryzen AI 300 series laptops. With the last minute delay of the Ryzen 900 series by 1~2 weeks, the embargo lift for the Ryzen AI 300 series is timed for this Sunday morning where I can now present the first AMD Zen 5 Linux benchmark results. And with being the first Zen 5 chip in my lab, I have been pushing it hard... Here is an extensive look at the ASUS Zenbook S 16 I received with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 current flagship SoC compared to a variety of other AMD and Intel laptop models. The focus was on both the raw performance and the package performance-per-Watt for the overall power efficiency of this Zen 5 SoC. And with it being the first Zen 5 hardware in the lab, I didn't limit the selection to just conventional laptop workloads but also explored the performance characteristics for various other workloads of interest to diverse Linux users and for an idea of the HX 370 potential or similar Zen 5 chips appearing in thin client / edge / IoT type devices. This initial taste of AMD Zen 5 has me extremely excited about the performance potential of the upcoming Ryzen 9000 series and EPYC Turin processors.

[13]An Initial Benchmark Of Bcachefs vs. Btrfs vs. EXT4 vs. F2FS vs. XFS On Linux 6.11

A number of Phoronix readers have been requesting a fresh re-test of the experimental Bcachefs file-system against other Linux file-systems on the newest kernel code. Your wish has been granted today with a fresh round of benchmarking across Bcachefs, Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, and XFS using the Linux 6.11-rc2 kernel. This round of testing was carried out on the newly-released Solidigm D7-PS1010 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs that offer very speedy performance for modern Linux desktops and servers.

[14]AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Linux Performance: Zen 5 With 3D V-Cache

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.

[15]FreeBSD 14.1 vs. DragonFlyBSD 6.4 vs. NetBSD 10 vs. Linux Benchmarks

After last week looking at how FreeBSD 14.1 has improved performance over FreeBSD 14.0, here is an expanded cross-OS comparison now looking at how the new FreeBSD 14.1 stable release compares to the recently released NetBSD 10.0, the current DragonFlyBSD 6.4 release, and then CentOS Stream 9 and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for some Linux comparison data points.

[16]AMD Radeon RX 9070 + RX 9070 XT Linux Performance

Last week AMD formally announced the Radeon RX 9070 series graphics cards that will begin shipping tomorrow at $549 for the Radeon RX 9070 and $599 for the RX 9070 XT. Today the review embargo is lifted so we can now share Linux performance benchmarks and more details on the open-source Linux driver support for these first AMD RDNA4 graphics cards.

[17]Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" Linux Benchmarks

With the Intel Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids" launch today the review embargo has now expired. I began with my Intel Granite Rapids Linux benchmarking a few days ago and have initial benchmarks to share for the flagship Xeon 6980P processors paired with MRDIMM 8800MT/s memory. This is just the beginning of a lot of Granite Rapids benchmarks to come on Phoronix. Compared to the existing AMD EPYC competition and prior generation Intel Xeon processors, the Xeon 6900P series performance surpassed my expectations and has debuted as an incredibly strong performer. In some areas of HPC and other workloads, Intel is able to regain leadership performance with Granite Rapids paired with MRDIMMs. In AI workloads where the software is optimized for AMX, the new Xeon 6900P CPUs can showcase staggering leads.

[18]AMD Ryzen 9000 vs. Intel Core Ultra Arrow Lake On Linux For Q1-2025 In ~400 Benchmarks

For those wondering how the latest AMD Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" series and Intel Core Ultra Series 2 "Arrow Lake" desktop processors are battling it out on Linux, here are some fresh benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux with the latest software updates as well as the newest system BIOS updates for a fresh, all-new look at these Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen desktop CPUs on Linux.

[19]AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 Benchmarks: The Fantastic Power Efficiency Of Zen 5

As noted in yesterday's launch-day AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 review with 100+ benchmarks, I've also been testing an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 Zen 5 laptop too. Here are those initial benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 as the 10-core / 20-thread laptop Zen 5 SoC. Like with the HX 370 testing, the Ryzen AI 9 365 continues to reinforce the great power efficiency uplift of Zen 5 as one of the most exciting advancements. In fact, for many benchmarks the Ryzen AI 9 365 was delivering even greater performance per Watt than the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.

[20]Quantifying The AVX-512 Performance Impact With AMD Zen 5 - Ryzen 9 9950X Benchmarks

With the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X Linux review out of the way yesterday, today's benchmarking of the Ryzen 9000 series is looking closely at the AVX-512 performance impact. With the Ryzen 9000 series the Zen 5 cores have a full 512-bit data-path compared to the "double pumped" 256-bit data path found in the Zen 4 processors as well as the Strix Point SKUs. In this article is an AVX-512 enabled versus disabled comparison for not only the Ryzen 9 9950X but also the prior generation Ryzen 9 7950X and looking too at the CPU power use, thermals, and peak frequency when engaging a variety of AVX-512 workloads.

[21]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.

[22]Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance For The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365

After seeing how the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 Zen 5 Strix Point performance is under Linux against a range of other Intel/AMD laptops, the next obvious question is... how does this compare to Windows? In this article is an initial look at the Windows 11 versus Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Linux performance for the same AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 SoC within an ASUS Zenbook S16 and running the same benchmarks in looking at the out-of-the-box performance difference.

[23]Intel Arc B580 Graphics Open-Source Driver Linux Gaming Performance

Last week Intel announced the Arc B-Series Battlemage graphics cards as their first Xe2 discrete GPUs. Ahead of the Arc B580 graphics card hitting Internet retailers tomorrow, today the review embargo lifts on the Intel Arc B580. Here is what to expect from the Linux driver support at launch for the Intel Battlemage graphics cards and how the Arc B580 is performing for Linux gaming/graphics workloads.

[24]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.



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

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[5] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-9950x-9900x

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ryzen-9600x-9700x

[7] https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-core-ultra-9-285k-linux

[8] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-epyc-9965-9755-benchmarks

[9] https://www.phoronix.com/review/apple-m4-intel-amd-linux

[10] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ryzen-9950x-windows11-ubuntu

[11] https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-os-amd-ryzen9-9950x

[12] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-ai-9-hx-370

[13] https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-611-filesystems

[14] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-9800x3d-linux

[15] https://www.phoronix.com/review/bsd-linux-threadripper-7980x

[16] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-radeon-rx9070-linux

[17] https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-xeon-6980p-performance

[18] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ryzen9000-core-ultra-linux613

[19] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-ai-9-365

[20] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-zen5-avx-512-9950x

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

[22] https://www.phoronix.com/review/windows-linux-ryzen-ai

[23] https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arc-b580-graphics-linux

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