A very convenient addition to Linux 6.16 for system administrators is reporting to user-space via sysfs counters for the number of hard and soft lock-ups as well as RCU stalls.

In April we looked at the Framework 13 updated for the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and its great out-of-the-box performance and nice power efficiency of Strix Point. Via ACPI platform profiles the power/performance mode can be tuned if desiring a longer battery life or preferring even greater performance. Today's article is looking at that power/performance impact of the different ACPI platform profiles available on the Framework 13 motherboard with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.

For those running an Network File System "NFS" server, the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel will allow optionally enabling a larger payload size that may yield better performance. Eventually the default payload size may be increased if all goes well from user feedback and testing.

This week on 5 June marks 21 years since I started Phoronix.com for providing Linux hardware reviews and open-source news. In marking the 21st birthday of Phoronix is a special Phoronix Premium offering if you wish to show your support and hopefully provide for a successful year.

A new version of the Genode open-source operating system framework was released last week that powers its Sculpt OS general purpose OS and over the years has proven to be an interesting technical grounds for those interested in OS concepts.

Posted for the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver in early 2024 was the initial Video Core Next 5.0 IP enablement that was part of their bring-up for the Radeon RX 9000 "RDNA4" graphics processors. It's taken until now though for enabling the VCN5 video encode/decode support within the user-space code for the RADV driver with Mesa 25.2.

While Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) has been around since Sapphire Rapids with select SKUs and with widespread availability since Emerald Rapids in late 2023, only now with the Linux 6.16 kernel debuting in H2'2025 is there going to be mainline kernel support for TDX on the host-side with the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM).

Valve just published the Steam Survey results for May 2025 with a nice increase for the Linux gaming marketshare.

Wine 10.9 fell slightly off its bi-weekly Friday release rhythm with only debuting today, but in any event it's now available for testing with the latest features for enjoying Windows games/applications on Linux and other platforms.

Merged today for the Linux 6.16 kernel were all of the Watchdog subsystem updates for monitoring system health and taking action such as rebooting if the system state goes bad. With the Linux 6.16 is the introduction of the Intel Overclocking Watchdog "OC WDT" driver.

The Linux 6.15 kernel that shipped as stable last week mistakenly shipped with a nasty CPU power regression for some systems. The issue is now fixed in Linux 6.16 Git and will be fixed shortly in the Linux 6.15 point releases.

The Linux kernel had not enabled support for Arm Scalable Matrix Extension (SME) due to bugs, but with the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel those issues have been resolved and so SME can now be enabled for the rare SoCs having said hardware support.

The Linux 6.16 merge window this weekend suffered an unexpected twist this weekend when Linus Torvalds noticed some unusual Git activity by a longtime Linux kernel developer. The issue is still being sorted through but it would appear that the possible malicious activity came down to some scripting issues around Git.

The release candidate of FreeBSD 14.3 is now available for testing ahead of the official operating system release this month.

May was another busy month when it comes to Linux hardware and software milestones albeit depressing when looking at the ongoing state of the web/ad industry. In any event there were 25 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles and another 268 original Linux-related news articles all written by your's truly for the month. Here is a look back at what excited Phoronix readers the most during May.

OpenBMC 2.18 released on Friday as the newest version of this Linux Foundation project providing an open-source baseboard management controller (BMC) firmware stack implementation. In recent years OpenBMC has been enjoying increasing success in deploying to server platforms from the mega hyperscalers to the more prominent OEM/ODM vendors seeing increasing customer demand for open-source BMC as part of broader open-source firmware interest from the industry.

To compile the Linux x86/x86_64 kernel has already enforced a minimum compiler version of GCC 8 while now with Linux 6.16 this requirement is in place for all other architectures. The GCC 8 and GNU Binutils 2.30 baseline for all Linux kernel architectures now allows removing a number of old workarounds from the codebase.

All of the big SoC and DeviceTree board updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.16 kernel including support for a number of new Arm SoCs as well as a RISC-V server SoC. Plus many new board additions, including continued work on bettering the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite/Plus laptop support under Linux.

In a blog post dated for 28 May that was only made public on Friday night followed by a new ROCm build tag, AMD engineers have begun sharing more details publicly about changes coming for ROCm 7.0. In particular, the HIP 7.0 interface is going to be "aligning HIP C++ even more closely with CUDA."

Merged back in late 2023 for Linux 6.7 was a cross-vendor solution for confidential computing attestation reports with the Linux Trusted Security Manager (TSM). In the succeeding kernel releases there weren't any further TSM updates issued but now for Linux 6.16 there finally is renewed work on this confidential computing code.