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)

XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.21 Released With Reduced Motion Setting, Support For Linyaps Apps

([Desktop] 21 January 11:14 AM EST XDG Desktop Portal)

XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.21 is now available for testing with the latest features for this portal frontend service to Flatpak.



The CPU Performance Of The NVIDIA GB10 With The Dell Pro Max vs. AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo"

([Processors] 21 January 11:22 AM EST 6 Comments)

With the Dell Pro Max GB10 testing at Phoronix we have been focused on the AI performance with its Blackwell GPU as the GB10 superchip was designed for meeting the needs of AI. Many Phoronix readers have also been curious about the GB10's CPU performance in more traditional Linux workloads. So for those curious about the GB10 CPU performance, here are some Linux benchmarks focused today on the CPU performance and going up against the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" within the Framework Desktop.



Linux 7.0 Apple Silicon Device Tree Updates Have All The Bits For USB Type-C Ports

([Apple] 21 January 09:18 AM EST Apple Silicon USB-C)

Ahead of the Linux 6.20~7.0 cycle kicking off next month, the Apple Silicon Device Tree updates have been sent out for queuing ahead of that next merge window. Notable this round are the Device Tree additions for rounding out the USB 2.0/3.x support with the USB-C ports.



Adjusting One Line Of Linux Code Yields 5x Wakeup Latency Reduction For Modern Xeon CPUs

([Intel] 21 January 06:27 AM EST Wakeup Latency Reduction)

A new patch posted to the Linux kernel mailing list aims to address the high wake-up latency experienced on modern Intel Xeon server platforms. With Sapphire Rapids and newer, "excessive" wakeup latencies with the Linux menu governor and NOHZ_FULL configuration can negatively impair Xeon CPUs for latency-sensitive workloads but a 16 line patch aims to better improve the situation. That is, changing one line of actual code and the rest being code comments.



New Patches Aim To Make x86 Linux EFI Stub & Relocatable Kernel Support Unconditional

([Linux Kernel] 21 January 05:55 AM EST Linux x86/x86_64 Boot Cleanup)

Prominent Intel Linux engineer H. Peter Anvin has posted a new patch series working to clean-up the Linux x86/x86_64 kernel boot code. Besides cleaning up the code, the kernel configuration would drop options around EFI stub mode and relocatable kernels in making those features now always enabled.



PHPStan Now 25~40% Faster For Static Analysis

([Programming] 21 January 05:40 AM EST PHPStan 2.1.34)

For those using the powerful PHPStan tool for static analysis on PHP code, this week's PHPStan 2.1.34 is promoting optimized performance with projects seeing around 25% to 40% faster analysis times.



An Exciting Day With More Performance Optimizations Merged For RADV In Mesa 26.0

([Radeon] 20 January 08:09 PM EST Radeon Vulkan Driver)

Mesa 26.0 was due to be branched last week and in turn start its feature freeze but ended up being pushed back to tomorrow (21 January) to allow some lingering features to land. It's been beneficial for the Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" with several interesting merge requests having landed in time for Mesa 26.0.



New Linux Patch Improved NVMe Performance +15% With CPU Cluster-Aware Handling

([Hardware] 20 January 05:51 PM EST Better NVMe Performance)

Intel Linux engineers have been working on enhancing the NVMe storage performance with today's high core count processors. Due to situations where multiple CPUs could end up sharing the same NVMe IRQ(s), performance penalties can arise if the IRQ affinity and the CPU's cluster do not align. There is a pending patch to address this situation. A 15% performance improvement was reported with the pending patch.



Linux 6.19 ATA Fixes Address Power Management Regression For The Past Year

([Hardware] 20 January 03:15 PM EST Power Management Issue)

It's typically rare these days for the ATA subsystem updates in the Linux kernel to contain anything really noteworthy. But today some important fixes were merged for the ATA code to deal with a reported power management regression affecting the past number of Linux kernel releases over the last year. ATAPI devices with dummy ports weren't hitting their low-power state and in turn preventing the CPU from reaching low-power C-states but thankfully that is now resolved with this code.



System76 Continues Driving More Improvements Into The COSMIC Desktop

([Desktop] 20 January 02:13 PM EST Ongoing COSMIC)

Following the December launch of Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS and the first major COSMIC desktop release, System76 software engineers have continued making improvements to their Rust-based desktop environment.



AMD Making It Easier To Install vLLM For ROCm

([AMD] 20 January 01:01 PM EST ROCm + vLLM)

Deploying vLLM for LLM inference and serving on NVIDIA hardware can be as easy as pip3 install vllm. Beautifully simple just as many of the AI/LLM Python libraries can deploy straight-away and typically "just work" on NVIDIA. Running vLLM atop AMD Radeon/Instinct hardware though has traditionally meant either compiling vLLM from source yourself or AMD's recommended approach of using Docker containers that contain pre-built versions of vLLM. Finally there is now a blessed Python wheel for making it easier to install vLLM without Docker and leveraging ROCm.



LLVM Adopts "Human In The Loop" Policy For AI/Tool-Assisted Contributions

([LLVM] 20 January 12:13 PM EST Human In The Loop)

Following recent discussions over AI contributions to the LLVM open-source compiler project, they have come to an agreement on allowing AI/tool-assisted contributions but that there must be a human involved that is first looking over the code before opening any pull request and similar. Strictly AI-driven contributions without any human vetting will not be permitted.



Support For More Bluetooth Guitars & Other HID Changes Ahead Of Linux 6.20~7.0

([Hardware] 20 January 10:21 AM EST HID)

A lot of HID subsystem updates have been queuing up ahead of the Linux 6.20~7.0 merge window in February. There is a lot of new hardware support on the way along with quirks for some existing hardware support ranging from laptop keyboard issues to enabling support for more PS4/PS5 guitars under Linux.



Patches Ready For Linux 7.0 To Enable Intel GPU Firmware Updates On Non-x86 Systems

([Intel] 20 January 09:08 AM EST Intel dGPU Firmware Updates On non-x86)

Patches are now positioned to go into the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle for supporting Intel discrete GPU firmware updating on non-x86 systems.



Fedora 44 Feature Approved For Better Windows On ARM Laptop Experience

([Fedora] 20 January 08:08 AM EST Out-Of-The-Box On ARM)

A change proposal has been cleared by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee "FESCo" for providing a nice out-of-the-box experience for Windows on ARM laptops namely the recent Snapdragon X1 laptops and will also be important for the upcoming Snapdragon X2 laptops too.



Adreno Gen 8 Vulkan Graphics Merged For Mesa 26.0 To Support The Snapdragon X2

([Mesa] 20 January 06:18 AM EST Qualcomm Adreno Gen 8)

Merged in time for the upcoming Mesa 26.0 release is the merging of Vulkan driver support for the Qualcomm Adreno Gen 8 graphics support that is notably used by the new Snapdragon X2 laptop SoCs as well as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.



DragonFlyBSD Now Allows Optional AMD GCN 1.1 Support In AMDGPU Driver

([BSD] 20 January 06:02 AM EST AMD GCN 1.1)

DragonFlyBSD's AMDGPU kernel graphics driver continues to be a port of the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver. Their latest porting effort for AMD graphics on DragonFlyBSD is now enabling optional support for the GCN 1.1 "Sea Islands (CIK) graphics processors on this modern alternative to the prior Radeon kernel driver.



X.Org Server May Create A New Selective Git Branch With Hopes Of A New Release This Year

([X.Org] 19 January 08:51 PM EST XServer Main Git Repo)

A proposal has been laid out for a new X.Org Server "main" Git branch to house their development going forward and cleaning up the development lapses over the past few years. Ultimately the hope is for having a new cleaned-up X.Org Server and XWayland Git branch for shipping new releases in 2026.



New Patches From Valve Bring AMDGPU Power Management Improvements For Old GCN 1.0 GPUs

([Radeon] 19 January 04:09 PM EST Southern Islands Power Management)

Last year Valve contractor Timur Kristóf managed to improve the AMDGPU driver enough for old GCN 1.0 Southern Islands and GCN 1.1 Sea Islands GPUs that with Linux 6.19 AMDGPU is now the default for those GPUs with better performance, RADV Vulkan out-of-the-box, and other benefits. He isn't done though improving the old GCN 1.0/1.1 era GPU support on this modern AMDGPU kernel driver - a new patch series posted today brings some power management fixes.



OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE To Provide A Security & Performance Win For Dealing With Containers

([Linux Kernel] 19 January 02:44 PM EST OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE)

A new feature expected to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel cycle is adding an OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE flag for the open_tree() system call. This OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE option can provide a nice performance win with added security benefits if you are dealing a lot with containerized workloads on Linux.



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I've been on this lonely road so long,
Does anybody know where it goes,
I remember last time the signs pointed home,
A month ago.
-- Carpenters, "Road Ode"