A few new firmware files were upstreamed today to the linux-firmware.git repository for supporting a new GFX12.0.1 (RDNA4) "Kicker" graphics processor. There was also an AMDGPU kernel graphics driver patch that just landed as well in Linux 6.17 for the RDNA4 Kicker variant.

Last week the Threadripper 9000 series began shipping and as shown in our launch-day Linux testing there was stunning performance with the 32-core Threadripper 9970X and 64-core Threadripper 9980X processors. Beyond the improvements thanks to the Zen 5 microarchitecture enhancements, the new Threadrippers while working as a drop-in replacement to existing TRX50 workstation motherboards now can handle DDR5-6400 R-DIMMs up from DDR5-4800 R-DIMMs with the Threadripper 7000 series. For those wondering about the gain attributed to the faster memory modules, here are benchmarks looking at the DDR5-4800 vs. DDR5-6400 real-world performance impact for AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9970X and 9980X CPUs.

While we eagerly await the release of ROCm 7.0, ROCm 6.4.3 is out today as the newest point release to the ROCm 6.4 open-source GPU compute stack.

The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) is rolling out a "fair use" quota where they will be asking the major hardware vendors (OEMs) to sponsor the project or contribute developer resources for the biggest users that rely on LVFS/Fwupd for serving system and device firmware to customers.

The latest Radeon RADV driver ray-tracing optimization being merged to Mesa 25.3 is support for triangle pair compression with RDNA4 (GFX12) graphics processors.

The PCI changes were merged last week for the Linux 6.17 merge window. There is new PCIe controller support and some other additions worth mentioning with the new PCI feature code.

Ahead of the upcoming FFmpeg 8.0 release for this widely-used, open-source multimedia library some more last minute features continue to land. Hitting FFmpeg Git today are some Vulkan Video additions.

Following the release of GCC 15.1 at the end of April as the first stable version of the GCC 15 compiler, GCC 15.2 is now available with a variety of bug fixes back-ported.

LACT 0.8.1 is out with a few important changes for this open-source Linux GPU control application that is written in Rust and rendered using GTK.

MariaDB today announced the general availability "GA" release of the MariaDB Community Server 12.0 release. This first MariaDB 12 release brings many exciting enhancements over MariaDB 11 for this open-source database originally derived from MySQL.

Following the recent Linux kernel patch adding the AMD Zen 6 synthetic feature flag I suspected more AMD Zen 6 kernel patches would begin flowing... Sure enough, two new patches today noting some new model IDs in the Family 1Ah family as well as confirming rumors that next-gen EPYC Venice processors would support 16 channel memory.

With the input subsystem updates for Linux 6.17 in addition to now mapping ther F13 to F24 keys by default for PS/2 keyboards, the "performance boost" key beginning to be found on some laptops now has a standardized keycode. With standardizing that keycode, Linux desktop/user-space software will be able to more easily and uniformly set the intended behavior should your laptop/system have such a performance key.

The Rust-written open-source Redox OS operating system saw a roughly 500% to 700% performance improvement for basic file copy operations since the end of last year, among other ongoing performance optimizations. Plus various other Redox OS features continue to be addressed too as noted in their newest monthly status report.

In today's launch-day review of the Framework Desktop with AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" were a number of benchmarks comparing the mini/SFF PC to Framework Laptops, the Strix Halo powered HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptops, and similar devices. With this being a desktop after all, for those wondering how the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 compares in a desktop form factor to the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X series processors, this article has all those benchmark numbers.

Today the review embargo lifts on the much anticipated Framework Desktop computer powered by AMD Ryzen AI Max 300 Series "Strix Halo" SoCs. Aside from offering an enclosure to allow old Framework motherboards to be re-tasked as a makeshift desktop computer, the Framework Desktop is the company's first dedicated desktop computer offering and it's very impressive in building around the Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" platform. Here is a look at the Framework Desktop with initial testing under Linux and a wide assortment of benchmarks.

Canonical just announced the release of Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS as the newest point release for this long-term support (LTS) operating system across desktop, server, and cloud.

It's just not Microsoft Windows and to a lesser extent Linux that can have challenges in dealing with heterogeneous CPU cores like Intel P/E hybrid cores but FreeBSD developers have begun working through those headaches too in trying to ensure a good experience of modern laptops running this BSD operating system.

Rust 1.89 is out today as the newest update to this popular programming language implementation prided by its memory safety features and more.

Similar to Clang-Tidy for tidying up C/C++ code using LLVM/Clang components, Flang-Tidy is in development as a tool for Fortran static analysis built upon LLVM's modern Flang compiler code. Flang-Tidy may be upstreamed in the future to LLVM while for now it's developed by TU Munich and Max Planck Computing.

The Linux 6.17 sound subsystem code last week introduced support for AMD ACP 7.2 as the next version of AMD's Audio Co-Processor IP. This appears to be for yet-to-be-released hardware and now over in the SoundWire subsystem is similar enablement work landing for AMD ACP 7.2.