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)

DXVK 2.4 Released With Direct3D 8 Support, Native WSI Improvements

([Vulkan] 10 July 07:38 AM EDT DXVK 2.4)

DXVK 2.4 has been released for this Direct3D over Vulkan API implementation.



Experimental Code Gets Open-Source Mesa RADV Vulkan Driver Running On Windows

([Radeon] 9 July 05:45 PM EDT RADV On Windows)

Over the years there have been various attempts at getting the open-source RADV Vulkan driver on Windows, Faith Ekstrand of Collabora has been recently hacking on it and achieving success for having this popular Radeon Vulkan API driver for Linux working under Windows.



GNOME Mutter Lands Support To Transform sRGB To HDR Outputs

([GNOME] 9 July 02:52 PM EDT Color State Transform)

Adding to the growing list of changes that is making September's GNOME 47 desktop release quite a delight, the Mutter compositor has merged another great feature.



AMD vs. NVIDIA Vulkan Ray-Tracing Performance On Linux With Breaking Limit

([Display Drivers] 9 July 11:00 AM EDT 150 Comments)

Basemark last week released GPUScore: Breaking Limit as a "groundbreaking cross-platform ray-tracing benchmark" that is scalable from mobile to desktops. They self-describe Breaking Limit as "the world's first true cross-platform benchmark for ray tracing." Given that and the benchmark meeting my benchmarking criteria, I've been trying it out on various AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards under Linux.



AMD FidelityFX SDK 1.1 Released With FSR 3.1 + Breadcrumbs & Brixelizer

([Radeon] 9 July 10:00 AM EDT FidelityFX SDK 1.1)

AMD's GPUOpen group this morning released the FidelityFX SDK 1.1 version that incorporates FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.1 (FSR 3.1) as the newest version of their game upscaling tech. Plus it introduces new components in the form of the Breadcrumbs Library and Brixelizer.



NVK Driver Lands New Platform Abstraction - Working Toward Allowing Other Kernel Drivers

([Mesa] 9 July 09:00 AM EDT NVK Platform Abstraction)

Merged for Mesa 24.2 is a massive set of patches providing a new platform abstraction for NVK, the open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver. With this new platform abstraction it begins to open the door toward running the NVK driver on alternative kernel (DRM) drivers.



Box64 v0.3 Brings Support For Emulating x86_64 Binaries With AVX/AVX2 On ARM

([Free Software] 9 July 05:58 AM EDT Box64 v0.3)

Box64 v0.3 is now available as the newest feature release to this user-space x86_64 emulator for Linux binaries on AArch64 (ARM64) hosts. Box64 is one of several promising projects in this area for being able to run x86_64 games and applications under ARM64 with great speed.



Hyperscalers Begin Working On CentOS Stream Hyperscale 10

([Operating Systems] 9 July 05:00 AM EDT CentOS Hyperscale SIG)

With CentOS Stream 10 beginning to take shape as the basis for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, the Hyperscale Special Interest Group (SIG) has begun crafting CentOS Stream Hyperscale 10.



Linux 6.11 Will Make The Keyboard Backlight Work On More Macs

([Apple] 9 July 04:00 AM EDT Apple Mac Magic Keyboard Backlight)

For those using an Apple Magic Keyboard with a T2-secured Mac, the upcoming Linux 6.11 kernel will enable working keyboard backlight support.



Loongson 3 CPUFreq Linux Driver Being Worked On For Better Power/Performance

([Hardware] 9 July 12:00 AM EDT Loongson CPUFreq Driver)

While Loongson's LoongArch processors have been supported under Linux from the start, there remain some missing/late elements still being pursued by Loongson engineers for better upstream support. One of the areas being worked on recently is a proper CPUFreq driver for Loongson 3 series processors for CPU frequency scaling for better performance and power management.



Firefox 128 Now Available With A Fix For A 25 Year Old Bug Report

([Mozilla] 9 July 12:00 AM EDT Firefox 128.0)

Mozilla Firefox 128.0 is now available for download ahead of the official release announcement due out in the coming hours.



Fedora Workstation 41 Install Media Will Ship With Wayland-Only GNOME

([Fedora] 8 July 08:26 PM EDT Wayland-Only Install Media)

Fedora Workstation 41 has been granted approval for its installation media (ISOs) to ship with only Wayland GNOME support with the X11 support removed.



Ubuntu 24.10 To Enable Frame Pointers For More Packages

([Ubuntu] 8 July 03:52 PM EDT Ubuntu 24.10 Frame Pointers)

With Ubuntu 24.04 LTS was a fundamental change made by Canonical to enable frame pointers by default for their packages in the name of improving the debugging and profiling experience. This has been as part of a broader push by Canonical to focus more on Ubuntu Linux performance and ensuring the needs of developers are met. With Ubuntu 24.10, more of the packages will have frame pointer support enabled.



AMD Ryzen 7000/8000 Series vs. 14th Gen Intel Core CPU Performance On Linux 6.10 With 400+ Benchmarks

([Processors] 8 July 11:02 AM EDT 44 Comments)

In preparation for upcoming CPU launches I have been spending the past month re-testing the various Intel Core and AMD Ryzen current generation processors on the very latest Linux software stack and latest system BIOS along with some updated and new benchmarks. For those wanting a fresh look at how the current AMD Ryzen 7000 and 8000 series processors are competing with 14th Gen Intel Core (Raptor Lake Refresh) processors, this article is for you with 18 processors and 443 benchmarks being carried out while using Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and upgrading to the Linux 6.10 development kernel.



LXD 6.1 Released With Automatic Core Pinning Load Balancing, Fixes Hosts With 64+ CPU Cores

([Virtualization] 8 July 09:40 AM EDT LXD 6.1)

Canonical today released LXD 6.1 as the newest version of this Ubuntu-focused solution for managing virtual machines (VMs) and containers.



Device Memory TCP Nears The Finish Line For More Efficient Networked Accelerators

([Linux Networking] 8 July 08:13 AM EDT Device Memory TCP)

A year ago Google engineers posted experimental Linux code for Device Memory TCP for more efficient transferring of data from GPUs/accelerators to network devices without having to go through a host CPU memory buffer. After going through many rounds of review, Device Memory TCP appears to be nearing the finish line.



ASUS EC Sensors Linux Driver Adding Support For The ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI

([Hardware] 8 July 06:22 AM EDT ASUS ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI)

For those with an ASUS ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI motherboard or thinking of getting one for this high-end AMD Ryzen 7000 series platform, the Linux support is taking another small step forward.



Intel Continues Readying Linux For Lunar Lake's New Adaptive Sharpening Filter

([Intel] 8 July 06:33 AM EDT Adaptive Sharpening DRM Property)

Back in February I wrote about Intel's open-source graphics driver engineers working on a new adaptive sharpening filter capability to be found with upcoming Xe2 graphics starting with Lunar Lake. This new adaptive sharpening filter has minimal power and performance impact and at least according to the driver engineers is working out rather well. Besides the Intel Xe kernel driver support around enabling this adaptive sharpening filter, Intel has also been readying the rest of the Linux desktop stack for exposing this capability.



GCC & LLVM/Clang Compilers Updated For Intel Branch Hint

([Intel] 8 July 06:06 AM EDT x86 Branch Hint)

Both the GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers today saw support for Intel's Branch Hint extension merged today for this feature of Redwood Cove P cores as found with current generation Meteor Lake processors as well as upcoming Intel Granite Rapids server processors.



Linux 6.10 Is Shaping Up Well Or It Might Just Be Due To 4th Of July Week

([Linux Kernel] 7 July 06:44 PM EDT Linux 6.10-rc7)

Linus Torvalds just released Linux 6.10-rc7 as the latest weekly release candidate of the forthcoming Linux 6.10 kernel.



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"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and
the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will
lose that, too."
-- W. Somerset Maugham