AMDVLK 2025.Q1.2 Released With Strix Halo Support

([Radeon] 28 February 05:57 AM EST AMDVLK 2025.Q1.2)

When seeing a new AMDVLK release was just tagged on GitHub and just a few hours to go until the Radeon RX 9070 series announcement, I was hoping it was going to be a new driver officially rolling out their new RDNA4 GPU support. Today's AMDVLK 2025.Q1.2 driver was not for officially introducing RDNA4 but does bring Strix Halo support and other improvements.

Intel Posts Linux Kernel Patches For Supporting APX - Advanced Performance Extensions

([Intel] 27 February 03:40 PM EST Linux Kernel + Intel AMX)

Intel initially detailed Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) back in mid-2023 as extensions to double the number of general purpose registers and add other performance features. In the time since they have done a lot preparing the GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers for the new APX ISA features while finally today they sent out an initial set of patches for preparing the Linux kernel for APX processors.

EA Open-Sources Command & Conquer Red Alert

([Linux Gaming] 27 February 02:44 PM EST EA Open-Source)

In a surprising announcement, Electronic Arts announced today that they have open-sourced Command and Conquer Red Alert under the GPL license along with Command and Conquer Tiberian Dawn and related titles.

Motion Control Subsystem Proposed For The Linux Kernel

([Linux Kernel] 27 February 01:30 PM EST Linux Motion Control Subsystem)

A set of patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list today propose the introduction of a Linux Motion Control "LMC" subsystem for drivers that could control devices like CNC machines and 3D printers.

SUSE's "Agama" OS Installer Receives Pleasant Facelift, Future Roadmap

([SUSE] 27 February 12:11 PM EST Agama 12)

SUSE's Agama project is their modern OS installer featuring a web-based UI that will serve as the installer of SUSE/openSUSE in future releases moving forward. Agama 12 is now available as the newest iteration of this operating system installer and there is also now a public road-map concerning future development plans.

NVIDIA 570.124.04 Linux Driver Brings Additional Fixes

([NVIDIA] 27 February 10:39 AM EST NVIDIA 570.124.04)

Going into beta just under one month ago was the NVIDIA 570.86.16 Linux driver that brought initial support for GeForce RTX 50 "Blackwell" graphics cards as well as Vulkan driver improvements, Variable Rate Refresh (VRR) support with multiple displays, GPU overclocking exposed by default, and various other refinements to this official NVIDIA Linux driver. Out today is the NVIDIA 570.124.04 stable Linux driver release.

FFmpeg Lands AV1 RTP Packetizer/Depacketizer

([Multimedia] 27 February 10:08 AM EST FFmpeg + AV1 RTP)

Merged yesterday to FFmpeg Git is an initial AV1 RTP packetizer and depacketizer in working to support the tentative AV1 RTP specification.

FreeBSD In Q4 Saw More Work For AMD Systems, Framework Laptops & PinePhone Pro

([BSD] 27 February 08:45 AM EST FreeBSD Status Update)

The FreeBSD project this morning published their quarterly status report that outlines all of the interesting OS improvements and other changes made during Q4'2024.

Fish 4.0 Shell Released With Code Ported From C++ To Rust

([Free Software] 27 February 08:24 AM EST Fish Shell 4.0)

Entering beta last year was the Fish Shell 4.0 release that migrated its codebase from C++ to Rust. Out today is the first stable 4.0 release for the Rust-ed version of the popular Fish Shell.

AMD Open-Sources GMLIB For RadeonSI Driver - Working On HDR Video Support

([Radeon] 27 February 06:58 AM EST AMD GMLIB)

Merged today for Mesa 25.1 is introducing a new previously AMD-internal library to the open-source RadeonSI Gallium3D driver dubbed GMLIB. This GMLIB code is being used by RadeonSI in conjunction with Radeon GPUs having the Video Processing Engine (VPE) hardware to deal with HDR video on Linux.

Zink Working On A "Nice Performance Boost" For OpenCL / DaVinci Resolve

([Mesa] 27 February 06:25 AM EST Zink cl_khr_image2d_from_buffer)

Mike Blumenkrantz as the lead developer of Mesa's Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver implementation and working for Valve as part of their Linux graphics team has been spending much time recently optimizing for OpenCL with the Rusticl Gallium3D driver.

x86 32-bit Changes Look To Be Ready For Linux 6.15 - Drops Support For More Than 4GB RAM

([Linux Kernel] 27 February 06:34 AM EST Cleaning Up x86 32-bit CPU Support)

Over the past few months there's been an in-progress patch series by Arnd Bergmann for cleaning up the x86 32-bit kernel support for running on x86_64 CPUs. After the third iteration of the patches were posted this week, these x86 32-bit CPU clean-ups were shuffled into the tip/tip.git "x86/cpu" Git branch ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.15 merge window.

Git 2.49-rc0 Released With "git backfill", zlib-ng Preparations & Rust Interface

([Programming] 26 February 01:57 PM EST Git 2.49-rc0)

Git maintainer Junio C Hamano announced Git 2.49-rc0 today as an early preview release for the next version of this widely-used, distributed version control system.

AMD EPYC Turin Power Profile Selection Impact On Performance & Efficiency

([Software] 26 February 11:00 AM EST 4 Comments)

Last week I published an article looking at the power efficiency of 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin" using the modern AMD P-State driver and the Power Profile options. The AMD P-State driver being used by default now for the EPYC 9005 series processors on Linux 6.12+ and paired with Power Profile option tuning can deliver a nice boost to server energy efficiency with only modest impact to the performance. Today's article are some complementary numbers I carried out recently on a Supermicro server looking at more of the Power Profile Selection options.

AMD Driver Lands DCC For Multi-Plane Formats With RDNA4, Tiling For Video Buffers

([Radeon] 26 February 08:55 AM EST RadeonSI Gallium3D)

More RadeonSI Gallium3D changes worth mentioning have landed today in Mesa 25.1 Git for the open-source Linux graphics driver stack.

Intel Graphics Driver With Linux 6.15 To Allow Tuning The GuC Power Profile

([Intel] 26 February 06:51 AM EST Power Profile Adjustment)

Following the various Intel graphics driver feature updates sent out earlier this week in building up the new kernel graphics/display driver features for Linux 6.15, another prominent pull request was sent out yesterday with additional material.

FineIBT-BHI Looks To Be Ready Ahead Of Linux 6.15 To Provide Tougher Kernel Defenses

([Linux Security] 26 February 06:30 AM EST FineIBT-BHI)

FineIBT-BHI as a means of tougher kernel defenses for fending off Branch History Injection (BHI) looks like it will be ready for upstreaming in next month's Linux 6.15 merge window.

Mesa's Vulkan WSI Now Supports Wayland Color Management

([Mesa] 26 February 06:17 AM EST Vulkan + Wayland Color Management)

Adding to the flurry of open-source work recently around the merged Wayland color management protocol for supporting HDR, the Mesa Vulkan Windowing System Integration (WSI) code has added support for this protocol.

Spectre Mitigations Being Worked On For BPF Programs

([Linux Security] 26 February 06:08 AM EST Speculation Barriers For BPF)

A "request for comments" patch series sent out on Monday is working on Spectre mitigations for BPF programs using speculation barriers.

Framework Announces Ryzen AI Max Powered Desktop, Framework Laptop 12

([Hardware] 25 February 08:22 PM EST Framework 2nd Gen)

Earlier today Framework Computer held a virtual and in-person event to announce their 2nd gen offerings in the form of a mini-ITX desktop powered by the new Ryzen AI Max SoCs, a 2-in-1 convertible laptop with the Framework Laptop 12, and Ryzen AI 300 series SoC/motherboard options for the Framework Laptop 13.