A lot happened in the Linux and open-source world during the month of April. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora 44 shipped, a lot of news around age attestation/verification laws, the Linux 7.0 kernel was released, Linux 7.1 is bringing many exciting changes as well as removing of old hardware drivers, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition CPU was released, we began testing the Intel Arc Pro B70 "BMG-G31", and much more software and hardware content that made the month interesting. Last month on Phoronix were 303 original news articles and 16 Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured benchmark articles.

Below is a look at the most viewed articles on Phoronix for April 2026. Before getting to that, just a friendly reminder that if you enjoy viewing all the original, daily content on Phoronix please consider showing your support by [1]joining Phoronix Premium to enjoy ad-free browsing, multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and other benefits while helping to make the site sustainable. Or at the very least please disable any ad-blocker while browsing this site. Tips via [2]PayPal and [3]Stripe are appreciated. There's just one month to go until Phoronix.com's 22nd birthday.

The most popular Linux hardware reviews for the last month on Phoronix included:

[4]Intel Arc Pro B70 Benchmarks With LLM / AI, OpenCL, OpenGL & Vulkan

Last month Intel announced the Arc Pro B70 with 32GB of GDDR6 video memory for this long-awaited Battlemage G31 graphics card. This new top-end Battlemage graphics card with 32 Xe cores and 32GB of GDDR6 video memory offers a lot of potential for LLM/AI and other use cases, especially when running multiple Arc Pro B70s. Last week Intel sent over four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards for Linux testing at Phoronix. Given the current re-testing for the imminent Ubuntu 26.04 release, I am still going through all of the benchmarks especially for the multi-GPU scenarios. In this article are some initial Arc Pro B70 single card benchmarks on Linux compared to other Intel Arc Graphics hardware across AI / LLM with OpenVINO and Llama.cpp, OpenCL compute benchmarks, and also some OpenGL and Vulkan benchmarks. More benchmarks and the competitive compares will come as that fresh testing wraps up, but so far the Arc Pro B70 is working out rather well atop the fully open-source Linux graphics driver stack.

[5]AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Benchmarks: The Best Desktop Performance For Linux Developers, Creators

Today we can finally share performance benchmarks of the long-rumored AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition processor. This new halo product for the Ryzen 9000 series desktop line-up offers captivating performance for developers frequently compiling code, creators, technical computing workloads for students or hobbyists or those not able to afford a Threadripper / EPYC type workstation, or similar heavy computing use. With the 16 cores / 32 threads and both CCDs having 3D V-Cache, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 offers leading performance among current generation desktop processors.

[6]Firefox 149 vs. Chrome 147 Web Browser Performance On Linux

It has been a while since featuring a showdown of the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers on Linux. With some fresh benchmarks being overdue plus the new JetStream 3 browser benchmark having been announced last week, here is some fresh data for how these two dominant web browsers are competing on the modern Linux desktop from an Intel Panther Lake system running Ubuntu 26.04.

[7]Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus Performance In 340+ Linux Benchmarks

Last month Intel began shipping the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus "Arrow Lake Refresh" desktop processor. This is a mighty interesting processor for the $349 USD price point with more cores and a larger cache compared to the Core Ultra 7 265K and capable of delivering much of the performance of the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K Arrow Lake processor. In today's article is a look at how well the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus performs under Linux with more than 340 different benchmarks representing a range of Linux workloads from gaming to creator to developer and technical computing uses.

[8]CachyOS Delivers More Performance Out Of Intel Panther Lake

Most of my Intel Panther Lake benchmarking over the past two months for the new Core Ultra Series 3 hardware has been done with Ubuntu Linux given the pervasiveness of it, especially in the corporate/enterprise space. But for those looking at achieving even greater out-of-the-box Linux performance on Intel Panther Lake, the Arch Linux based CachyOS does a pretty fine job at further advancing the performance.

[9]Intel Arc Pro B70 Open-Source Linux Performance Against NVIDIA RTX & AMD Radeon AI PRO

Last week after receiving the Intel Arc Pro B70 review hardware I began with some benchmarks looking at how the Arc Pro B70 compared to existing Intel GPUs on Linux with their fully open-source driver stack. Today's article features the latest Arc Pro B70 benchmarks under Linux in looking at how the performance and value compares to other NVIDIA RTX and AMD Radeon (AI) PRO workstation graphics cards in the lab.

[10]AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" Enjoys Great Performance Gains With Latest Linux Software

With the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out in three weeks, I have been re-testing a number of different devices on this newest Ubuntu release. One of the most significant improvements to note was when running the Framework Desktop with Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" and quantifying the performance gains of the Radeon 8060S Graphics since launch last year. Here's a look at how the Vulkan and OpenGL performance has evolved for the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 since its launch last year in going from Ubuntu 25.04 to Ubuntu 26.04.

[11]Ubuntu 26.04 Delivers Great Performance Improvements For AMD Strix Point, Especially For RDNA 3.5 Graphics

As part of my ongoing testing around the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 release I have been running a lot of benchmarks. After recently showing some nice performance gains for AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" with Ubuntu 26.04, several Phoronix readers inquired about any performance uplift from the more modest but still powerful Strix Point laptops like the popular Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 SKU. Here are benchmarks showing the performance of Ubuntu 26.04 in its near final state compared to Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS with its HWE stack on an ASUS Zenbook S16.

[12]Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Leads Over Windows 11 In Creator Workstation Performance

The past few weeks I have been testing out the new HP Z6 G5 A workstation desktop PC. It's a beast in being powered by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9975WX, eight channels of DDR5-5600 memory, and paired with a NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Max-Q workstation graphics card. The full review on the HP Z6 G5 A workstation will be published on Phoronix in the next week or so but given the timing and that it shipped with WIndows 11 Pro, here is a look at how Windows 11 Pro is competing against the newly-released Ubuntu 26.04 LTS in creator/workstation workloads.

[13]Ubuntu 26.04 Provides More Performance For AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo"

Last week I provided benchmarks to quantify how the AMD Strix Halo graphics performance has evolved since launch one year ago, in today's article is a look at how the Zen 5 CPU performance with the flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 has evolved under Linux in the year since these exciting APUs began making their way to high-end laptops and desktops. Complementing the nice Radeon 8060S performance gains are also some nice CPU performance benefits quantified when using Ubuntu 26.04.

And the most popular Linux/open-source news for April:

[14]AWS Engineer Reports PostgreSQL Performance Halved By Linux 7.0, But A Fix May Not Be Easy

An Amazon/AWS engineer raised the alarms on Friday over the current Linux 7.0 development kernel leading to the throughput for the PostgreSQL database server being around half that of prior kernel versions. The culprit halving the PostgreSQL performance is known but a revert looks like it may not happen and currently suggesting that PostgreSQL may need to be adapted.

[15]Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare

If Valve's latest Steam Survey monthly figures are accurate, Steam on Linux enjoyed a very wild month of March. Steam on Linux is now above the 5% threshold and more than twice the size of the Steam on macOS marketshare.

[16]Valve Developer Improves The Linux Gaming Experience For Limited vRAM Hardware

Natalie Vock of Valve's Linux graphics driver team primarily working on the RADV Vulkan driver has come up with a new interesting creation: patches to the Linux kernel and KDE for sharply improving the gaming experience for those running systems with limited amounts of video memory. Such as for graphics cards with just 8GB of dedicated vRAM, the patches now available -- initially on CachyOS for a nice out-of-the-box experience -- provide a noticeably better Linux gaming experience.

[17]Linux 7.1 Expected To Begin Removing i486 CPU Support

It's finally time: a patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from the Linux kernel. Anyone still using an i486 CPU with an upstream Linux kernel would be incredibly rare and no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support, but in case you are, you can continue to be running one of the existing Linux LTS kernel versions.

[18]Debian Is Figuring Out How Age Verification Laws Will Impact It

With age verification/attestation laws down to the OS level enacted by California and being decided upon by other US states, it's been a hot topic of discussion in the open-source world. For the Debian project that is strictly volunteer/community-driven unlike various commercial Linux platforms, they are figuring out how such laws will impact them.

[19]The "NTFS Resurrection" Has Occurred For Linux 7.1

As a very exciting follow-up to the recent article around the new NTFS driver being submitted for Linux 7.1 to address the shortcomings of the current Paragon NTFS3 driver and the prior read-only NTFS kernel driver, that work has been merged!

[20]CachyOS Rolls Out A Super-Charged Linux 7.0 Kernel

The popular Arch Linux based CachyOS has now rolled out the Linux 7.0 kernel to its users. But beyond re-basing against the latest upstream kernel version it is also carrying some extra patches.

[21]Linux May Drop Old Network Drivers Now That AI-Driven Bug Reports Are Causing A Burden

Old network maintenance drivers are becoming a maintenance burden in the era of fuzzing and predominantly AI-driven bug detection causing an uptick in possible bug/security reports to upstream Linux kernel developers but with these drivers potentially having no actual users.

[22]Cloudflare Announces EmDash As Open-Source "Spiritual Successor" To WordPress

Cloudflare continues to be full of open-source surprises. Today Cloudflare announced EmDash as an open-source "spiritual successor" to WordPress with an emphasis on better security.

[23]The New Linux Kernel AI Bot Uncovering Bugs Is A Local LLM On Framework Desktop + AMD Ryzen AI Max

Earlier this month on Phoronix we were the first to draw attention to a new fuzzing tool / AI bot uncovering kernel bugs by Greg Kroah-Hartman, the "second in command" for Linux kernel development and stable maintainer. Greg has now shared more light on the "gregkh_clanker_t1000" for this tool that has been uncovering more Linux kernel bugs the past few weeks.

[24]Linux 7.0 Ready For Release With Many Exciting Changes

The Linux 7.0 kernel is gearing up for its stable release and should be out this coming Sunday, 12 April, barring any major last minute issues.

[25]Redox OS Introducing New CPU Scheduler For ~1.5x Performance In Heavy Tasks

The Rust-based Redox OS operating system is preparing to land a new CPU scheduler thanks to work being carried out by open-source developer Akshit Gaur on modernizing the platform's process scheduling subsystem.

[26]Linux 7.0 Released With New Hardware Support, Optimizations & Self-Healing XFS

As expected the stable Linux 7.0 kernel was just released today in marking this next kernel release. The Linux 7.0 milestone comes due to Linus Torvalds' preference of bumping the major version number after hitting X.19 as opposed to any single major change, but in any event there are a lot of great improvements and changes to find with this new kernel version. Linux 7.0 is also what's powering the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release.

[27]New Patches Allow Building Linux IPv6-Only, Option To Deprecate "Legacy" IPv4

Longtime Linux developer David Woodhouse sent out a patch series today to "deprecate legacy IP" support within the Linux kernel. While some of his commentary his April 1st-esque, he does acknowledge much of this work has merit. Ultimately it can allow for building a Linux kernel with IPv6-only support and working on allowing "legacy" IPv4 support to be disabled as part of the kernel build.

[28]Linux Sees Fixes For Its GD-ROM Driver In 2026 For Sega Dreamcast

Seeing new Linux patches for benefiting Sega Dreamcast devices wasn't on my bingo card for 2026. A patch series was sent out today for fixing the Linux kernel's GD-ROM driver for accessing media using the drivers on "real" Sega Dreamcast devices.

[29]Ubuntu Linux Will Begin Landing AI Features Throughout The Next Year

Now that Ubuntu 26.04 LTS has shipped, Canonical is opening up on their next major focus for Ubuntu development: lots of AI features.

[30]KDE Linux Hardening Their OS Against Updates Making Systems Unbootable

KDE Linux as the in-house, leading-edge Linux distribution for showcasing the latest KDE Plasma innovations has promoted itself as being an atomically updated Linux distribution. But these atomic updates didn't quite work out as planned recently with some users finding their system(s) unbootable. But improvements are being made now for better robustness moving forward.

[31]Mozilla Announces "Thunderbolt" As An Open-Source, Enterprise AI Client

Mozilla today announced "Thunderbolt" as an open-source AI client built for control and independence. Mozilla Thunderbolt, while having the worst possible name, is built for organizations and others wanting to deploy self-hosted AI infrastructure.

[32]KDE's KWin Continues Working On Vulkan Support, Other Improvements For Plasma 6.7

KDE Plasma developers continue working on new features for Plasma 6.7 while continuing to land more fixes and hardening for the current Plasma 6.6 stable series.

[33]Farewell ISDN, Ham Radio & Old Network Drivers: Linus Torvalds Merges 138k L.O.C. Removal

Linus Torvalds did it! He merged the pull request to rid the Linux kernel of the old Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) subsystem and various other old network drivers largely for PCMCIA era network adapters. This was the code suggested for removal given the recent influx of AI/LLM-generated bug reports against this dated code that likely has no active upstream users remaining.



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[4] https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arc-pro-b70-linux

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-9950x3d2-linux

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/review/firefox-chrome-2026

[7] https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-core-ultra-7-270k-plus

[8] https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-panther-lake

[9] https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arc-pro-b70

[10] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2604-strix-halo

[11] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2604-strix-point

[12] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2604-windows-11

[13] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2604-ryzen-ai-max

[14] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-AWS-PostgreSQL-Drop

[15] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-On-Linux-Tops-5p

[16] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Better-Gaming-Low-vRAM

[17] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Phasing-Out-i486

[18] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Undecided-Age-Laws

[19] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-New-NTFS-Driver

[20] https://www.phoronix.com/news/CachyOS-Super-Charged-Linux-7.0

[21] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Old-Network-AI

[22] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Cloudflare-EmDash

[23] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Clanker-T1000-AMD-Ryzen-AI-Max

[24] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-Changes

[25] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Redox-OS-New-CPU-Sched

[26] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-Released

[27] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-IPv6-IPv4-Legacy-Knobs

[28] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-GD-ROM-Dreamcast-Fix

[29] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-AI-Features-2026

[30] https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Linux-Hardening-March

[31] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mozilla-Thunderbolt

[32] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Plasma-6.7-Improvements

[33] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Removes-Old-Net