Earlier this week was an exciting look at Intel Xe3 graphics performance gains on Linux 7.2 with Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" hardware. On the other side of the table, with AMD hardware on this forthcoming kernel an area to be excited about are some I/O improvements at least for 5th Gen EPYC with speedy PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD storage.
For helping to keep X11 clients running in a modern Linux desktop world with Wayland or even for running on macOS or Android, there is now yet-another option being developed with libx11-compat. The libx11-compat project is working to re-implement the Xlib client library atop SDL2/SDL3 interfaces for allow broad underlying platform coverage.
([Intel] 22 July 08:16 AM EDT
Directed Package-Level Thermal Interrupt)
Back in March Intel software engineers began sending out Linux patches for Directed Package-Level Thermal Interrupts as a new capability with recent Intel processors. This notable efficiency improvement is now queued for introduction in the Linux 7.3 cycle once its merge window opens in a month.
([Multimedia] 22 July 07:56 AM EDT
Lots Of Audio Quirks)
Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE sent out this week's batch of sound fixes that he describes as "A collection of fixes that have been accumulated recently. The amount is still "new normal", but all small fixes. Mostly hardware-specific quirks, but including a few core fixes, too." The "new normal" has been a common phrase recently to reflect the increased tempo of patches as well as security/bug disclosures all due to the increased pace of AI/LLM activity.
([Raspberry Pi] 22 July 07:38 AM EDT
Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 10-inch)
Following the launch of the 7-inch Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 and the 5-inch display variant, Raspberry Pi announced today the addition of a 10-inch model.
([Linux Storage] 21 July 06:00 PM EDT
Cryptsetup 2.8.7)
Linux's cryptsetup for configuring and managing encrypted storage devices is ready with a new version as the developers work to deal with the recent deprecation of the Linux AF_ALG interface.
([Ubuntu] 21 July 02:02 PM EDT
Ubuntu Snap Security)
Canonical today disclosed three new Snap security vulnerabilities affecting snapd. Two are rated high impact vulnerabilities while the third is considered medium but covers all Ubuntu releases of the past decade going back to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
([Hardware] 21 July 01:49 PM EDT
Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme)
Following recent Linux kernel patches enabling the Snapdragon X2 Elite powered Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen11 and HP EliteBook X G2q X2 Elite laptops to boot outside of Windows 11 on ARM, Qualcomm engineers have now posted a new patch series for getting the X2 Elite Extreme powered ASUS Zenbook A16 working on Linux.
Earlier this month I provided a look at the KDE Plasma 6.7 Wayland vs. X11 session performance for graphics/gaming on CachyOS using NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 graphics. Since then Phoronix readers -- including some premium supporters -- requested seeing some additional desktops tested with the latest CachyOS packages. So here we are now with seeing how KDE Plasma 6.7 compared to the Wayland-only GNOME Shell 50.3 desktop as well as the X11-based Xfce 4.20 desktop on CachyOS.
([Ubuntu] 21 July 11:38 AM EDT
Ubuntu Enterprise Store)
For months the Enterprise Store "enterprise-store" has been mentioned in some Ubuntu documentation and other elements while today it was formally announced by Canonical. The Enterprise Store is for helping to manage Ubuntu Linux deployments particularly within enterprise organizations that may have their computers air-gapped or otherwise strict Internet controls.
([AMD] 21 July 08:00 AM EDT
Ryzen AI Halo LED Driver)
For those that have picked up one of the neat AMD Ryzen AI Halo mini PCs, the LED driver allowing for customization of the LED lighting bar is set to be mainlined for the Linux 7.3 kernel cycle.
([Intel] 21 July 06:23 AM EDT
Intel Open-Source GPU Compute)
Going in-step with last week's release of the Intel Graphics Compiler 2.38.2, out today is the Intel Compute Runtime 26.27.39122.11. Most intriguing with the new release is Intel continuing to build out the still-experimental LEO feature.
([AMD] 21 July 06:06 AM EDT
AMD Zen 6 Instruction Based Sampling)
Among the recent patch series in preparing Linux for upcoming AMD Zen 6 processors is making the kernel aware of additional EILVT registers to be found with at least EPYC Venice platforms.
([Hardware] 21 July 05:48 AM EDT
InputPlumber 0.78)
InputPlumber is out with its newest feature release. As a reminder, InputPlumber is the open-source input router and remapper daemon for combining various input devices from gamepads to mice and keyboards as well as the ability to emulate them.
([Intel] 20 July 08:35 PM EDT
Intel Cold Reset Recovery)
One of the patch series going through nearly a dozen revisions now is for introducing a cold reset recovery method for the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) drivers with an initial focus on the Intel Xe kernel graphics driver.
([Intel] 20 July 02:47 PM EDT
Granite Rapids More MRDIMM)
With Intel's next-generation Xeon Diamond Rapids processors not slated to launch until next year and with AMD EPYC Venice being right around the corner, Intel announced today that with upcoming BIOS updates they will be expanding the range of RDIMM and MRDIMM memory support for current-generation Xeon 6 and Xeon 6+ processors.