ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Intel Lunar Lake Showing Some Performance Improvements With Linux 6.16

([Software] 3 July 10:50 AM EDT 4 Comments)

For those on an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 "Lunar Lake" system, the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel is looking to be in better shape for those newest Intel SoCs. In testing carried out using a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura edition laptop, there are performance gains in some areas with the Linux 6.16 development kernel.



X.Org Server Lands Big Improvement For Using Zink With GLAMOR

([X.Org] 3 July 08:39 AM EDT DMA-BUF On Zink With GLAMOR)

A nice improvement was merged today to the X.Org Server for benefiting the GLAMOR 2D acceleration code when using the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver.



Linux 6.17 To Finish Clearing Out Old Code For OpenMoko Devices

([Hardware] 3 July 06:52 AM EDT OpenMoko)

Linux 6.17 is expected to clear out some final remnants of the OpenMoko Neo 1973 and Neo FreeRunner smartphone support from that Linux smartphone effort from two decades ago.



Lenovo Legion Go S HID Driver Posted For Linux

([Hardware] 3 July 06:30 AM EDT Lenovo Legion Go S)

The Linux support for the Lenovo Legion Go S gaming handheld continues to be improved upon thanks to the option of having Steam OS on this alternative to the Steam Deck.



Improved TTM Memory Management Eviction Submitted Ahead Of Linux 6.17

([Intel] 3 July 06:12 AM EDT TTM Eviction)

Sent out today was the newest drm-misc-next pull request of changes built up over the past week for DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.17 kernel cycle. The drm-misc-next material is the usual random assortment of DRM display/graphics driver changes and core improvements, which this week includes some TTM eviction work.



Libreboot 25.06 Released With Support For Two More Outdated Systems

([Hardware] 3 July 05:55 AM EDT Libreboot 25.06)

Libreboot 25.06 released this week as the newest version of this Coreboot downstream focused on shipping only with free and open-source components. But due to the strict open-source nature of Libreboot, it continues to primarily see support for long outdated platforms.



Steam On Linux Usage Dips Slightly For June, AMD Linux CPU Usage Hits 69%

([Valve] 2 July 08:38 PM EDT Steam For June)

Steam Survey issues prevented the survey results from being posted on the evening of the 1st as is traditionally done, but the results were just uploaded now to the Steam website. Steam on Linux usage dipped slightly but overall remains healthy with much excitement still around the Steam Deck and SteamOS efforts.



Debian 13 Installer RC2 Fixes An Annoying Issue, Improves Btrfs Rescue Handling

([Debian] 2 July 08:28 PM EDT Debian 13)

Following last month's release of Debian Installer Trixie RC1 as the installer for the upcoming Debian 13.0 release, a second release candidate was issued today for testing.



ZLUDA Making Progress In 2025 On Bringing CUDA To Non-NVIDIA GPUs

([Programming] 2 July 04:01 PM EDT ZLUDA)

The ZLUDA open-source effort that started off a half-decade ago as a drop-in CUDA implementation for Intel GPUs and then for several years was funded by AMD as a CUDA implementation for Radeon GPUs atop ROCm and then open-sourced but then reverted has been continuing to push along a new path since last year. The current take on ZLUDA is a multi-vendor CUDA implementation for non-NVIDIA GPUs for AI workloads and more. More progress was made during Q2 on this effort.



AMD Posts Linux Patches For New AI Engine Driver "amd-ai-engine"

([AMD] 2 July 12:07 PM EDT AMD AI Engine)

Not to be confused with the AMDXDNA accelerator driver for the Ryzen AI NPUs, AMD software engineers today posted patches for review on the "amd-ai-engine" accelerator driver. This new AMD AI Engine driver is for supporting the IP found on their Versal adaptive SoCs.



Firefox 120 To Firefox 141 Web Browser Benchmarks

([Software] 2 July 11:00 AM EDT 30 Comments)

For those curious about the direction of Mozilla Firefox web browser performance over the past year and a half, here are web browser benchmarks for every Firefox release from Firefox 120 in November 2023 through the newest Firefox 140 stable and Firefox 140 beta releases from a few days ago. Every major Firefox release was benchmarked on the same Ubuntu Linux system with AMD Ryzen 9 9950X for evaluating the performance and memory usage of this open-source web browser.



Wayback Hopes To Be Ready Next Year With Alpine Linux Planning To Use It By Default

([Wayland] 2 July 09:56 AM EDT Wayback)

A few days ago Wayback was announced as an X11 compatibility layer for X11 desktops environments leveraging a rootful XWayland server. While currently experimental, the hope is that it will be production-ready next year and Alpine Linux is looking at using it by default for its X11 environment.



Better Late Than Never: Linux 6.17 To Enable Intel DG1 Graphics By Default

([Intel] 2 July 08:49 AM EDT Intel DG2 No force_probe)

Prior to the DG2/Alchemist discrete GPUs from Intel there was the DG1 graphics processor that served primarily as the initial developer vehicle for facilitating Intel's modern discrete GPU push. DG1 ended up being in the Intel Xe MAX GPU for a small number of laptops and then there's also been a select number of DG1 graphics cards surfacing on eBay in the years since. Only now in 2025 is the upstream Linux kernel driver set to enable Intel DG1 graphics out-of-the-box for modern Linux distributions.



GNOME Papers Document Viewer Approved To Replace Evince In GNOME 49

([GNOME] 2 July 06:33 AM EDT GNOME Papers)

GNOME Papers has been in development as a modern GTK4-based document viewer. There have been many improvements made to Papers and now ahead of the GNOME 49 release in September, it's been approved to replace Evince as the official document viewer of the GNOME desktop.



Mesa's Zink Preps NV_timeline_semaphore For Better OpenGL-Vulkan Interoperability

([Mesa] 2 July 06:20 AM EDT GL_NV_timeline_semaphore)

Mike Blumenkrantz with Valve's Linux graphics driver team continues working on enhancements to Mesa's Zink driver for OpenGL implemented over the Vulkan API. A new merge request is further enhancing OpenGL and Vulkan interoperability by supporting the GL_NV_timeline_semaphore extension.



Linux Patches Posted For Axiado AX3000 SoC Support

([Hardware] 2 July 06:07 AM EDT Axiado AX3000)

The newest Arm SoC seeing Linux kernel patches working their way toward the mainline kernel is the Axiado AX3000 as a security processor designed for cloud data center, network gear, and more.



AMD Preps Some Compute Driver Fixes For Polaris & Hawaii Era GPUs With Linux 6.17

([Radeon] 1 July 04:47 PM EDT AMDGPU-Next)

AMD today submitted their initial batch of "new stuff" for queuing into DRM-Next of their kernel graphics/compute driver changes they have prepared for the upcoming Linux 6.17 cycle opening in a few weeks.



Performance & Power Of The Low-Cost EPYC 4005 "Grado" vs. Original EPYC 7601 Zen 1 Flagship CPU

([Processors] 1 July 10:00 AM EDT 19 Comments)

For those on very long server upgrade cycles, typically just running the hardware until failure or consider buying second-hand servers that are generations old for lower up-front cost, today's unique article is for you with quantifying a first-generation EPYC server compared to today's entry-level EPYC processors in performance and power efficiency. With the fascinating AMD EPYC 4005 "Grado" budget-friendly server processors I was curious how well they would stack up against AMD's original flagship EPYC processor, the AMD EPYC 7601 "Naples" processor from the Zen 1 era. Can an entry-level brand new Grado server processor with dual channel DDR5 memory outpace an original EPYC server with twice the core/thread counts and eight channel DDR4 server memory? Yes, with huge gains in performance and power efficiency.



Canonical Decides To Double Down On Their Investment In Java For Ubuntu

([Ubuntu] 1 July 08:52 AM EDT OpenJDK Java + Ubuntu)

Ubuntu maker Canonical has decided to "double down" their investment in OpenJDK Java for Ubuntu Linux.



Gentoo Releases Updated Install Media Based On KDE Plasma 6.3 + Linux 6.12 LTS

([Operating Systems] 1 July 08:00 AM EDT Gentoo)

The Gentoo Linux project ended the month of June by releasing new install media.



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