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)

Patches Hoping For The Upstream Kernel Finally Provide Google Pixel 4a Support

([Google] 23 April 05:58 AM EDT Qualcomm Snapdragon 730/730G/732G)

The Google Pixel 4a smartphones launched in mid-2020 and now in mid-2025 it looks like we might finally be close to seeing mainline kernel support for the Pixel 4a devices and other hardware making use of Qualcomm Snapdragon 730/730G/732G SoCs.



QEMU 10.0 Released With True Multi-Queue Support, New Apple Graphics Devices

([Virtualization] 22 April 08:35 PM EDT QEMU 10)

QEMU 10.0 was released today as the newest version of this emulator code that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack.



Linux 6.15 Git Tanked Nginx HTTPS Web Server Performance - Here's The Bisect

([Software] 22 April 05:09 PM EDT 13 Comments)

With the Linux 6.15 kernel settling down nicely, I've been testing out the current Linux Git state on more systems in looking for any performance changes. Unfortunately this week I ran into a large performance regression affecting the Nginx HTTP(S) web server. Here's a look at that problem currently affecting Linux Git.



CachyOS Linux Distribution Makes More Improvements To Its Handheld Edition

([Operating Systems] 22 April 03:30 PM EDT CachyOS April 2025)

The April 2025 ISO update is out today for CachyOS, the Arch based Linux distribution known for its aggressive out-of-the-box performance on modern hardware.



NVK Now Vulkan 1.4 Conformant For NVIDIA Maxwell GPUs

([Mesa] 22 April 02:01 PM EDT Vulkan 1.4)

Mesa's NVK Vulkan driver had been Vulkan 1.4 conformant for Turing and newer GPUs, but now with Mesa 25.2-devel it's Vulkan 1.4 conformant going back to Maxwell GPUs. This change is exported to be back-ported to the upcoming Mesa 25.1 release as well for those interested in using this open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver.



AMD Ryzen AI Max 300 "Strix Halo" Graphics IP Versions Confirmed

([AMD] 22 April 12:27 PM EDT AMD Ryzen AI Max 300)

For those that have been wondering about the Linux support and more details around the Ryzen AI Max 300 "Strix Halo" APUs on Linux, here's a brief update.



Intel Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" Performance On Linux Has Improved A Lot Since Launch

([Processors] 22 April 10:00 AM EDT 17 Comments)

Today's Linux benchmarking at Phoronix is looking at how the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K performance has evolved since its launch last October. Taking the launch-day benchmarks from October with the same hardware, we are revisiting the Intel Arrow Lake performance under Linux today using the newest system BIOS and the newly-released Ubuntu 25.04 for seeing how the performance has evolved roughly over the past half-year.



GCC Compiler Adds Targeting Support For XuanTie RISC-V CPUs

([GNU] 22 April 09:41 AM EDT GCC + XuanTie)

One of the early features being merged for what will become the GCC 16 compiler following last week's GCC 15 code branching is CPU targeting support for the XuanTie RISC-V processors.



Kmemdump Proposed For The Linux Kernel To Help With Memory Dumping & Debugging

([Linux Kernel] 22 April 08:28 AM EDT Kmemdump)

Eugen Hristev of Linaro sent out a "request for comments" patch series today proposing kmemdump for the Linux kernel as a new means to assist in debugging driver/system problems by making it easier to dump memory for specific areas/regions.



Linux Being Patched For Buggy MWAIT Behavior On Intel Ice Lake Servers

([Intel] 22 April 06:59 AM EDT Buggy MWAIT)

The Linux kernel has seen safeguards for select prior Intel CPU cores due to bugs around the MONITOR/MWAIT implementation with the processors. MWAIT/MONITOR bugs was found to be the cause of annoying issues at boot for Lunar Lake laptops and also previously plagued Goldmont Atom cores. It also turns out that Ice Lake servers can be subject to similar MWAIT/MONITOR behavior.



Intel Vulkan Linux Driver Begins Prepping For Ray-Tracing Changes With Xe3

([Intel] 22 April 06:34 AM EDT Better Xe3 Ray-Tracing Presumed)

Merged yesterday to Mesa Git for next quarter's Mesa 25.2 release is an improvement for the Intel Vulkan ray-tracing code with an eye on next-gen Xe3 graphics hardware.



Linux Patch Queued To Report Outdated Intel CPU Microcode As A Vulnerability

([Intel] 21 April 04:55 PM EDT Old Microcode As Security Vulnerability)

Last year a patch was raised for the Linux kernel that would report outdated CPU microcode versions as a security vulnerability. With Intel routinely issuing new CPU microcode updates for security vulnerabilities and addressing other functional issues, the Linux kernel would begin warning users when recognizing that outdated CPU microcode is deployed for a given processor. That patch has now been queued into a tip/tip.git branch and thus looking like it will be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel cycle.



AMD ROCm 6.4 Adds SPIR-V Linking Support To HIP

([AMD] 21 April 03:58 PM EDT SPIR-V Linking With HIP)

With the recently released AMD ROCm 6.4 release for this open-source GPU compute stack for Radeon and Instinct hardware there are yet more indications around AMD's growing software ecosystem expansion. With ROCm 6.4 are additions to the HIP API for allowing linking of SPIR-V code objects, which is the intermediate representation used by Vulkan as well as with OpenCL and other Khronos APIs.



GCC Patch Revived For -mtune=generic Showing Nice Benefits On Intel & AMD CPUs

([GNU] 21 April 01:26 PM EDT GCC Performance)

A 2021 era patch for the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) has been revived and discussed in recent days around simplifying the memcpy and memset inlining strategies when compiling code with the "-mtune=generic" option. The patch takes the approach during that generic tuning to try to avoid branches. In doing so, some nice performance benefits are observed in some benchmarks.



Ubuntu 25.04 vs. Windows 11 CPU Performance For The AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360

([Operating Systems] 21 April 08:16 AM EDT 67 Comments)

Earlier this month was a look at the AMD RDNA 3.5 graphics between Windows 11 and Ubuntu 25.04 using a Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 "Strix Point" SoC within a Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6. That was an interesting benchmark battle and providing a fresh look at the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver stack relative to Radeon Software on Windows. For those curious about the current Zen 5(C) performance, today's article are all of the CPU benchmarks for the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 performance under the newly-released Ubuntu 25.04 and Windows 11 as pre-loaded by Lenovo.



Intel Posts Newest Code For Cache Aware Scheduling On Linux

([Intel] 21 April 06:31 AM EDT Cache Aware Load Balancing)

Intel engineers have recently been working on the notion of cache-aware scheduling / load balancing for benefiting the likes of Intel and AMD processors sporting multiple caches. Posted today was the newest iteration of these patches that are still seeking to get more feedback and testing around this potential useful addition to the Linux kernel.



FamFS Ported To FUSE For Fabric-Attached Memory File-System

([Linux Storage] 21 April 06:12 AM EDT FamFS)

One year ago we covered Micron working on FamFS as a new file-system for fabric-attached memory with an emphasis on Compute Express Link (CXL) devices. That started off as a conventional kernel driver while now the newest patches posted this weekend are morphing it into a user-space driver via FUSE.



RISC-V getrandom vDSO Ready Ahead Of Linux 6.16 With Exciting Performance

([RISC-V] 21 April 05:59 AM EDT getrandom vDSO For RISC-V)

Merged last year in Linux 6.11 was getrandom() support in the vDSO for x86/x86_64 and then in Linux 6.12 was extended to LoongArch and ARM64. With the upcoming Linux 6.16 cycle, this support for faster while still secure RNG for user-space is set to come to RISC-V.



Wine 10.6 Released With New Command Processor Lexer, 27 Bug Fixes

([WINE] 21 April 12:00 AM EDT Wine 10.6)

After missing its bi-weekly development release regiment this past Friday, Wine 10.6 was tagged on Sunday as the newest routine update to this open-source software that enables Windows applications and games to run on Linux and other platforms.



Linux 6.15-rc3 Released With GCC 15 Build Fixes, Intel Bartlett Lake & Zen 5 Check

([Linux Kernel] 20 April 05:05 PM EDT Linux 6.15)

Easter doesn't get in the way of Linus Torvalds' weekly kernel release regiment: Linux 6.15-rc3 is now available for testing the latest kernel fixes ahead of the stable Linux 6.15 kernel release coming around the end of May.



More

We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should
govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the
center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major
prophet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual
concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get
Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God.
But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual
resources. If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further
proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology,
the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and
they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and
think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that
much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.
-- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"