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)

Linux Sensor Monitoring For ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X HERO, Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI A

([Hardware] 23 December 05:59 AM EST Linux HWMON)

For those currently owning an ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X HERO or ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI A motherboard, Linux sensor monitoring support will be in place for the next kernel release.



Intel Linux Driver Preps For Up To 13 Different Panther Lake H SoCs

([Intel] 22 December 08:15 PM EST Panther Lake H)

It looks like the upcoming Intel Panther Lake H SoCs for the next-gen premium/high-end performance laptop market there could be quite a few different SKUs. A new patch for an Intel open-source driver expands the Panther Lake H line-up from three to 13 different IDs.



Google Taps More Performance Out Of AMD Zen CPUs With BPF-CCX Scheduling

([Google] 22 December 04:06 PM EST BPF CCX For AMD Chiplet CPUs)

For helping with thread placement on modern AMD Zen systems with multiple CPU core complexes, Google has been developing "BPF CCX" that leverages the Linux kernel's eBPF capabilities paired with a user-space agent for fine-grained thread control. Google has found very positive performance results out of their use of this alternative means of high performance scheduling for achieving even greater performance on AMD processors under Linux.



RADV Adds Support For New Performance Counters To Help Game Developers

([Radeon] 22 December 03:34 PM EST Radeon GPU Profiler 2.6)

Samuel Pitoiset of Valve's open-source Linux graphics team has landed improvements for the Mesa 260 RADV driver to support new performance counters in conjunction with AMD's Radeon GPU Profiler 2.6 release.



Elementary OS 8.1 Switches Over To Wayland Session By Default

([Operating Systems] 22 December 01:38 PM EST Elementary OS 8.1)

Thirteen months after the release of Elementary OS 8.0, Elementary OS 8.1 is now available for this Ubuntu 24.04 LTS based Linux distribution that focuses on ease of use and usability. With Elementary OS 8.1 they have transitioned to using the Wayland session by default.



Lua 5.5 Released With Declarations For Global Variables, Garbage Collection Improvements

([Programming] 22 December 12:25 PM EST Lua 5.5)

Five years after releasing Lua 5.4, Lua 5.5 debuted today as the newest version of this lightweight and embeddable scripting language.



Linux 6.19's Significant ~30% Performance Boost For Old AMD Radeon GPUs

([Display Drivers] 22 December 10:14 AM EST 27 Comments)

For those still using old AMD GCN 1.0 "Southern Islands" or GCN 1.1 "Sea Islands" graphics cards, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel is a wonderful holiday gift. With Linux 6.19, the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs are now defaulting to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver in place of the legacy "Radeon" DRM driver that has been the default for GCN 1.1/1.0 and other ATI/AMD graphics processors of the past 2+ decades. In this article is a look at the performance benefit of now AMDGPU being the default as well as now enabling RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box.



Rex: Proposed Safe Rust Kernel Extensions For The Linux Kernel, In Place Of eBPF

([Linux Kernel] 22 December 09:18 AM EST Rust Rex)

University researchers presented Rex at this month's Linux Plumbers Conference 2025 in Tokyo. Rex is designed for "safe and usable" Rust-based kernel extensions that could serve in place of eBPF programs for extending the Linux kernel functionality.



Linux 7.0 To Remove Support For AMD's Never-Released Ryzen AI NPU2

([AMD] 22 December 08:55 AM EST AMD NPU2)

The upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel (unless it ends up being called Linux 6.20) will drop support for the AMD NPU2 as their second-generation neural processing unit that never ended up being released into any retail products.



NVIDIA's Quest For A "Safe" Linux Kernel For Automobiles, Robotics

([NVIDIA] 22 December 06:43 AM EST Automotive Safety Integrity Level ASIL-B)

NVIDIA engineer Igor Stoppa presented at the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) earlier this month around using Linux in safety-critical environments like automobiles and the current shortcomings of the upstream Linux kernel and the challenges on achieving Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) certifications around the Linux kernel. It's an interesting read/watch around the safety of Linux (or not) for such strict safety environments.



Weston 15.0 Alpha Released With New Protocols, Experimental Vulkan Renderer

([Wayland] 22 December 06:17 AM EST Weston 15)

After being delayed by three months to allow additional time for new features to land, Weston 15.0 Alpha 1 is out today as a big feature release for this reference Wayland compositor.



Intel Releases GenAI Examples v1.5 - While Validating This AI Showcase On Old Xeon CPUs

([AI] 22 December 06:01 AM EST Intel Generative AI Examples 1.5)

Intel engineers as part of the OPEA Project today released the Generative AI Examples v1.5 update. This "GenAIExamples" open-source project is a collection of GenAI examples as part of showing the capabilities of the Open Platform for Enterprise AI (OPEA) and also highlighting Intel's hardware strengths for generative AI.



Intel Releases VA-API libva 2.23 Adds AV1 Profile 2 Support

([Intel] 22 December 05:44 AM EST libva 2.23)

Intel today released libva 2.23 as the newest feature release for this Video Acceleration API "VA-API" reference library implementation. Most significant with libva 2.23 is adding AV1 Profile 2 support.



Linux 6.19-rc2 Released Following A Quiet Week

([Linux Kernel] 21 December 07:04 PM EST Linux 6.19)

The second weekly release candidate of Linux 6.19 is now available for testing in leading up to the stable release in early February.



MPV 0.41 Released With Wayland Improvements, Vulkan Hardware Decoding Preferred

([Multimedia] 21 December 02:54 PM EST MPV 0.41)

MPV 0.41 is out today as the newest feature release for this MPlayer/mplayer2-derived open-source video player. With MPV 0.41 there is a big focus on improving Wayland support as well as now preferring Vulkan Video acceleration over alternative video decode APIs.



AMD ISP4 Linux Driver Patches Update Again For HP ZBook Ultra G1a, Future Ryzen Laptops

([AMD] 21 December 12:55 PM EST AMD ISP4 Driver v7)

One of the features that sadly didn't make it into the recent Linux 6.19 merge window was the long-awaited AMD ISP4 driver for supporting the web camera found with the high-end HP ZBook Ultra G1a and also expected to be used by future flagship AMD Ryzen laptops.



Intel Prepares For KVM Guest VMs To Support Advanced Performance Extensions (APX)

([Intel] 21 December 07:43 AM EST Intel APX For KVM Guests)

Since Linux 6.16 the Intel APX support has been ready for the kernel infrastructure and goes along with the compiler toolchain support for Advanced Performance Extensions with the likes of GCC and LLVM/Clang. The latest element being worked on for APX enablement in the open-source/Linux world is for allowing KVM guest virtual machines (VMs) to make use of APX.



Linux 6.19-rc2 Adding Support For CRKD Guitar Controllers

([Hardware] 21 December 06:38 AM EST CRKD Guitars)

Most notable with the input subsystem updates sent out today ahead of the Linux 6.19-rc2 release is some new hardware support. New this week is adding support for CRKD Guitars for those into musical gaming/apps.



WMI Marshalling Support For Linux Aims To Match Windows' ACPI/WMI Handling

([Hardware] 21 December 06:25 AM EST WMI Marshalling)

Open-source developer Armin Wolf has been working most recently on marshalling support for the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) platform code within the Linux kernel. This WMI marshalling support is to better match the behavior of Microsoft Windows' WMI ACPI driver and ultimately to allow for better compatibility with some ACPI firmware and enhancing some WMI drivers.



Linux 6.19 Lands Fix For Seagate Barracuda HDD Taking Down The SATA Bus

([Hardware] 21 December 06:11 AM EST Seagate HDD Workaround)

It's not often getting to talk about hard drives on Phoronix these days, but there's an important fix merged to the Linux 6.19 kernel today ahead of Linux 6.19-rc2. If you happen to be using a Seagate ST2000DM008 Barracuda 2TB HDD, an important fix was merged to avoid it taking down the systems' SATA bus and/or potentially other issues.



More

Linux Advocacy Crackdown

SHERIDAN, WY -- In an unprecedented blow to Linux advocacy, Aaron McAdams, an
employee at the Sheridan Try-N-Save Discount Store, was fired last week.
According to the store's general manager, McAdams was fired because "he
constantly rearranged items on shelves so that Linux-related books and
software boxes would be displayed more prominently than Windows merchandise."
McAdams' boss added, "If he would have spent as much time actually working as
he did hiding Windows books at the back of shelves, he wouldn't have received
the pink slip."

The general manager supplied Humorix with videotapes from the store's
security cameras showing McAdams in action. In one scene, he takes a whole
stack of "...For Dummies" books and buries them in the Cheap Romance section,
an area of the store rarely visited by computer users. In another, McAdams
can be plainly seen setting copies of Red Hat Linux in front of a large,
eye-catching display of various Microsoft products at the front of the
store. Finally, at one point McAdams can be seen slapping huge tags reading
"DEMO DISPLAY BOX -- NOT AVAILABLE UNTIL 1999" on boxes of Windows 98.

McAdams disputes his bosses accusations. "If he would spend more time
actually working instead of peering over security camera footage for hours on
end, this store might actually turn a profit for a change."