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)

Vulkan 1.4.324 Adds Experimental AMD Extension To Help With Ray-Tracing

([Vulkan] 1 August 09:00 AM EDT VK_AMDX_dense_geometry_format)

Vulkan 1.4.324 is out today as the first Vulkan API specification update in two weeks with a variety of clarifications/corrections plus a new extension from AMD.



More Intel Driver Maintainer Changes In Linux 6.17

([Intel] 1 August 08:44 AM EDT Intel Driver Maintainers)

Following the recent Intel driver being orphaned due to layoffs at the company and other Intel Linux engineering changes due to the ongoing restructuring at the company, for the Linux 6.17 kernel there are some additional Intel driver maintainer changes spotted.



Intel IPU7 Driver Merged For Linux 6.17 For Webcams On Lunar Lake & Panther Lake Laptops

([Multimedia] 1 August 06:36 AM EDT Intel IPU7)

The media subsystem updates were submitted and subsequently merged on Thursday for the ongoing Linux 6.17 merge window. There are several notable media changes for Linux 6.17 but arguably most prominent is the IPU7 driver entering staging for working on web camera support for Intel Lunar Lake and next-generation Panther Lake laptops.



Framework 12, Clear Linux Going EOL, AMD EPYC Performance & Other Excitement In July

([Phoronix] 1 August 06:00 AM EDT July 2025 Recap)

During last month on Phoronix were 276 original news articles and another 15 featured reviews/benchmark articles around our forte of Linux hardware. Even with the summer here there has been no slowdown in interesting hardware running on Linux and the pace of innovation happening around open-source software.



EXT4 Shows Wild Gains With Better Block Allocation Scalability In Linux 6.17

([Linux Storage] 1 August 06:06 AM EDT EXT4)

The EXT4 file-system enhancements for Linux 6.17 were merged on Thursday and bring better scalability to the block allocation code as well as fixing the file-system's large folios support. The scalability work can show some wild gains in select areas.



Linux 6.17 EDAC Code Supports Several Newer Intel CPUs

([Intel] 1 August 05:35 AM EDT Error Detection And Correction)

The Error Detection And Correction "EDAC" driver improvements were merged earlier this week for the ongoing Linux 6.17 merge window and with that comes a number of Intel hardware platforms now being supported.



Intel XeSS 2.1 Released With Frame Generation For Non-Intel GPUs But Still A Binary Mess

([Intel] 31 July 08:37 PM EDT Intel XeSS 2.1)

This evening Intel released XeSS 2.1 as the newest version of their Xe Super Sampling library with upscaling, frame generation, and low latency optimizations for gamers. Notable with XeSS 2.1 is that it introduces XeSS Frame Generation with Xe Low Latency support now for non-Intel GPUs.



Steam Beta Brings Fix For UI Scaling On XWayland

([Valve] 31 July 04:59 PM EDT Steam Beta)

Valve is ending out the month of July with a new Steam beta release that has a few Linux-specific fixes.



Linux 6.17 GPU Drivers Led By Stable Intel Xe3 Panther Lake & SR-IOV For Battlemage

([Hardware] 31 July 02:46 PM EDT Linux 6.17 Graphics Drivers)

All of the open-source kernel graphics driver feature changes were merged earlier today for the Linux 6.17 kernel. For Linux 6.17 there is an enormous amount of new feature work ready to go with the modern Intel graphics driver code. Plus the always active AMD graphics driver changes and various refinements to the many smaller graphics/display drivers.



Lenovo Legion Gaming Drivers & New Intel Discovery Driver For Telemetry In Linux 6.17

([Hardware] 31 July 01:51 PM EDT x86 Platform Drivers)

The x86 platform driver updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.17 kernel. The x86 platform drivers area traditionally has been around Linux laptop hardware support but in recent years more work on handheld devices too plus Intel/AMD server platform functionality.



AMD EPYC 4545P: 16 Zen 5 Cores @ 65 Watts For Low-Power / Energy Efficient Servers

([Processors] 31 July 11:31 AM EDT 13 Comments)

Back in May when AMD launched the EPYC 4005 "Grado" processors for low-power, low-cost server processors we tested the EPYC 4565P and EPYC 4585PX. The EPYC 4565P is their standard 16-core offering while the EPYC 4585PX is the 3D V-Cache variant for these processors catering to web hosting, SOHO servers, edge computing, and other applications where not needing the performance of the flagship EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors. There is also another 16-core variant with the EPYC 4545P and what makes this SKU interesting is the 16-cores / 32-threads but with a 65 Watt TDP. In the Ryzen 9000 series so far AMD hasn't introduced any 16-core, 65-Watt part that makes the EPYC 4545P all the more interesting. Here are some benchmarks of the EPYC 4545P for those shopping for an affordable and very power efficient server platform that still sharply outperforms Intel's Xeon E / Xeon 6300 competition.



Ubuntu 25.10 Snapshot 3 Released For Monthly Testing

([Ubuntu] 31 July 10:33 AM EDT Ubuntu 25.10)

For the Ubuntu 25.10 development cycle to complement the daily ISOs, Canonical began releasing monthly snapshots to facilitate more testing from the community and also in working to enhance their build automation / infrastructure. Today marks the third monthly release of Ubuntu 25.10 for testing.



Apple SMC Driver Merged For Linux 6.17 To Be Able To Reboot Macs

([Apple] 31 July 06:40 AM EDT System Management Controller)

The Apple System Management Controller (SMC) driver was successfully merged this week into Linux 6.17 for being able to reboot modern Apple M1 / M2 Macs under Linux (the Apple M3 / M4 Linux support remains in development). It's the latest improvement for Apple Silicon on the upstream Linux kernel compared to the downstream Asahi Linux code that has been carrying the SMC driver and other in-development/tentative patches.



Linus Torvalds Continues Using A Radeon RX 580 Graphics Card, Back On An Intel Laptop

([Radeon] 31 July 06:20 AM EDT Radeon RX 580)

The AMD Radeon RX 480 / RX 580 "Polaris" graphics cards remain very popular on the Steam Survey and among enthusiasts/desktop users at large even though they are nearly a decade old. The nine year old Polaris graphics cards have aged well in the marketplace and are an affordable choice. For Linux users they continue enjoying strong open-source driver support. It turns out Linux creator Linus Torvalds himself is still relying on an AMD Radeon RX 580 with one of his main systems.



Fedora Considers Hardlinking Identical /usr Files By Default For Deduplicating RPM Assets

([Fedora] 31 July 06:03 AM EDT Fedora Hardlinking)

Another change proposal filed recently for the Fedora Linux 43 release is to hardlink identical files within /usr by default for RPM-provided files that are 100% identical and can be then deduplicated to help conserve disk space and increase system efficiency.



Linux's Lockdown LSM Back To Being Maintained For Restricted Computing

([Linux Kernel] 31 July 05:56 AM EDT Linux Lockdown)

Upstreamed to the Linux kernel back in 2019 was the Lockdown security module for opt-in hardware/kernel security restrictions. It was a difficult and contentious process getting to the Linux kernel but then was left without any formal maintainer shortly after being mainlined. Now for helping to renew this Linux security module, two developers have stepped up to takeover maintainership of Lockdown.



libinput 1.29 Released With High Resolution Scroll Wheel Improvement

([Wayland] 31 July 05:40 AM EDT libinput 1.29)

Libinput 1.29 was just released as the newest version of this open-source input handling library used on the modern Linux desktop both under X.Org and Wayland environments.



Linux Begins Preparing For The Lenovo Legion Go 2 Handheld

([Hardware] 30 July 08:50 PM EDT Lenovo Legion Go 2)

In recent days there have been an increasing flow of leaks surrounding the Legion Go 2 as the next-generation handheld from Lenovo. The Lenovo Legion Go 2 is reported to be launching later this year with an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme SoC, 144Hz OLED display, and a variety of other hardware upgrades over the original Lenovo Legion Go. Linux driver activity around the Legion Go 2 has begun.



Linux 6.17 Lands New Driver To Power On The T-HEAD TH1520 RISC-V SoC's GPU

([Hardware] 30 July 08:34 PM EDT T-HEAD GPU Power Sequence)

The Linux 6.17 kernel has merged a new driver for powering up the Imagination PowerVR-based graphics processor found within the Alibaba T-HEAD TH1520 RISC-V SoC. This power sequencing driver is just for being able to power-up the GPU before the actual graphics driver can takeover.



Mesa 25.2-rc3 Released With RADV Vulkan Video Fixes, NVK Conformance Update

([Mesa] 30 July 04:29 PM EDT Mesa 25.2-rc3)

The third weekly release candidate of Mesa 25.2 is now available for testing ahead of its planned stable release in August.



More

A guy walks into a bar, orders a beer, carries it to the bathroom and dumps it
into a urinal. Over the course of the next few hours, he goes back to the bar
and repeats this sequence -- several times. Finally the bartender got so
curious that he leaned over the bar and asked him what he was doing.

Replied the customer, "Avoiding the middleman."