Merged back in late 2023 for Linux 6.7 was a cross-vendor solution for confidential computing attestation reports with the Linux Trusted Security Manager (TSM). In the succeeding kernel releases there weren't any further TSM updates issued but now for Linux 6.16 there finally is renewed work on this confidential computing code.

A few new media drivers have been introduced as part of the Linux 6.16 merge window.

The popular Arch Linux derived CachyOS operating system that is known for its nice out-of-the-box performance and other optimizations is out with a new build. CachyOS is closing out the month of May with some nice refinements in its newest ISO refresh of the year.

Along with this week bringing the Plasma 6.4 Beta 2 desktop, there's been other changes merged for Plasma 6.4 as well as some early feature work on Plasma 6.5.

The many power management subsystem updates and related changes have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel.

Intel engineers are preparing the Linux kernel for future Data Center GPUs. This work confirms new Intel Data Center GPUs coming based on Battlemage.

Alpine Linux 3.22 is now available as the newest version of this Linux distribution popular for use with containers and embedded purposes due to its small, simple, and secure focus.

Sandisk earlier this month announced the WD_BLACK SN8100 as what they claim is the current world's fastest PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD for consumers. Given how well the WD_BLACK SN850X performs under Linux as a PCIe Gen 4.0 drive, I decided to buy a WD_BLACK SN8100 for some Linux testing at Phoronix to compare to various other drives in the lab. Here is a preliminary look at the WD_BLACK SN8100 2TB performance under Ubuntu Linux.

The latest upstream Linux kernel improvement for AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization "SEV" is the introduction of a virtual TPM driver.

With how well the open-source and upstream AMD Radeon Linux graphics driver stack is these days between the mainline Linux kernel and Mesa, the Radeon Software for Linux packaged driver releases are not usually notable these days on Phoronix... The packaged Radeon Software for Linux drivers haven't been popular with gamers/enthusiasts in years given how good the upstream support is and those packaged bits mostly useful for those just running enterprise Linux distributions with older versions of Linux and Mesa. But the next Radeon Software for Linux packaged driver release is set to introduce a big change.

For making use of AMDGPU user queue functionality, the latest Mesa user-space side work has been merged for Mesa 25.2 to enable support for high priority graphics user queues.

Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX) updates for the in-development Linux 6.16 contain a fix so SGX is now less likely to cause a fatal machine check.

As an alternative to Coredumps dumping to a file or a pipe connected to a user-mode helper process, Linux 6.16 is introducing the ability to send Coredumps over an AF_UNIX socket.

Overnight Intel upstreamed their IPU7 firmware binaries into the linux-firmware.git repository where Linux distributions will then be able to pick them up for easy consumption. IPU7 is for their latest Image Processing Unit for some web cameras on their latest-generation Lunar Lake platform.

Following the exciting EXT4 performance work, XFS atomic writes, and other exciting file-system pull requests submitted for the ongoing Linux 6.16 merge window, the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) changes have been submitted and merged for this next kernel version.

OBS Studio 31.1 Beta 1 is out today as the newest version of this popular cross-platform and open-source solution for gaming live streaming, desktop screencasting, and similar screencasting/live-streaming uses.

The MMC subsystem feature changes have been merged for the Linux 6.16 kernel. Interestingly and surprisingly, it's not until now that the Linux kernel has properly supported the graceful host removal for eMMC and SD cards.

NVIDIA just released their v575.57.08 driver as the first stable Linux driver in their R575 release branch.

There is a lot of exciting networking changes to find with the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel both for wired and wireless devices as well as some exciting core networking improvements/optimizations.

One of the many advantages with the newly announced EPYC 4005 series for entry-level servers is support for DDR5-5600 ECC memory compared to the current Xeon 6300 series being limited to DDR5-4800 memory. With the launch-day EPYC 4005 "Grado" benchmarks earlier this month of the AMD EPYC 4585PX and EPYC 4565P I was running with DDR5-5600 ECC memory modules. But for those wondering about the performance when using DDR5-4800 comparable to the Xeon 6300 / Xeon E-2400 series, here are some comparison benchmarks for reference.