AMD Publishes Open-Source GIM Driver For GPU Virtualization, Radeon "In The Roadmap"

([AMD] 23 April 08:15 PM EDT AMD GIM)

AMD has published as open-source their "GPU-IOV Module" used for virtualization with Instinct accelerators. It's also reported on their roadmap for bringing virtualization support to their client (Radeon) discrete GPUs.

OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Brings KDE Plasma 6 By Default, Official Server Edition

([Operating Systems] 23 April 04:55 PM EDT OpenMandriva Lx 6.0)

OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Rock is now available with the KDE Plasma 6 desktop shipping by default while still offering both Wayland and X11 session options. There is also now an official server edition of OpenMandriva.

Linux 6.15 Lands Fix For "3x Performance Regression" Affecting Nginx & Other Software

([Software] 23 April 02:50 PM EDT 13 Comments)

The Linux 6.15 kernel has just merged a fix for the big performance regression I spotlighted yesterday on Phoronix with a huge hit to the Nginx HTTPS web server performance that could see a 3x regression from the in-development Linux 6.15 kernel code. It turns out other workloads/applications also were negatively impacted by this regression. While a stumper at first even with the bisected commit, the issue was luckily resolved very quickly.

Mesa 25.1-rc2 Released With NVK Vulkan 1.4 Conformance For Older NVIDIA GPUs

([Mesa] 23 April 02:22 PM EDT Mesa 25.1-rc2)

Mesa 25.1-rc2 is now available for testing as the newest weekly test version of this collection of OpenGL and Vulkan drivers. Mesa 25.1 continues working its way toward a stable release in May.

Orange Pi RV2 Benchmarks: The Most Performant RISC-V Board For Less Than $100 With 8 Cores + 8GB RAM

([Computers] 23 April 10:30 AM EDT 33 Comments)

Earlier this month Canonical announced Ubuntu Linux support for the Orange Pi RV2 as a low-cost RISC-V developer board. The Orange Pi RV2 with eight RISC-V cores and 8GB of RAM costs just around $64 USD. The price point and specs were interesting that I ordered one and have been running performance benchmarks on it since for seeing how capable this is as finally an interesting, low-cost and readily available RISC-V board.

AMD Posts Open-Source Linux Patches For Pensando RDMA Driver

([AMD] 23 April 08:20 AM EDT AMD Pensando RDMA)

The newest open-source Linux driver being worked on by AMD engineers is a Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) solution for their Pensando networking hardware.

Ubuntu 25.10 Moving Ahead With Plans For Migrating To Rust Coreutils

([Ubuntu] 23 April 06:31 AM EDT Ubuntu 25.10 + Rust Coreutils)

Back in March some ideas were talked about by Canonical engineers for Ubuntu Linux to move to Rust Coreutils and other Rust-written system components. Some of this is likely to materialize for the Ubuntu 25.10 release due out in October to allow for sufficient testing ahead of the all important Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release next year. Today the more solidified plans have been laid out for moving to the Rust Coreutils as a replacement to GNU Coreutils with Ubuntu 25.10.

VMware Updates Linux Patches For Running VMware Workstation Atop KVM

([Virtualization] 23 April 06:05 AM EDT VMware Workstation Powered By KVM)

One of the biggest surprises of last year was finding out that VMware has been working on shifting VMware Workstation from proprietary code to building atop the upstream KVM code within the Linux kernel. Following the initial patches from last October, an updated patch series was sent out on the Linux kernel mailing list yesterday for working on this transition.

Fedora 43 Change Proposal Filed For Removing GNOME X11 Packages: Wayland-Only GNOME

([Fedora] 23 April 06:15 AM EDT Wayland-Only GNOME)

Following a lot of work in this direction toward the end goal of removing GNOME X11 support, this milestone may finally be acheived for the Fedora 43 cycle due out by the end of the year. A change proposal has been filed for removing the GNOME X11 packages in the repository and in turn making the GNOME desktop Wayland-only on Fedora Linux.

Patches Hoping For The Upstream Kernel Finally Provide Google Pixel 4a Support

([Google] 23 April 05:58 AM EDT Qualcomm Snapdragon 730/730G/732G)

The Google Pixel 4a smartphones launched in mid-2020 and now in mid-2025 it looks like we might finally be close to seeing mainline kernel support for the Pixel 4a devices and other hardware making use of Qualcomm Snapdragon 730/730G/732G SoCs.

QEMU 10.0 Released With True Multi-Queue Support, New Apple Graphics Devices

([Virtualization] 22 April 08:35 PM EDT QEMU 10)

QEMU 10.0 was released today as the newest version of this emulator code that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

Linux 6.15 Git Tanked Nginx HTTPS Web Server Performance - Here's The Bisect

([Software] 22 April 05:09 PM EDT 13 Comments)

With the Linux 6.15 kernel settling down nicely, I've been testing out the current Linux Git state on more systems in looking for any performance changes. Unfortunately this week I ran into a large performance regression affecting the Nginx HTTP(S) web server. Here's a look at that problem currently affecting Linux Git.

CachyOS Linux Distribution Makes More Improvements To Its Handheld Edition

([Operating Systems] 22 April 03:30 PM EDT CachyOS April 2025)

The April 2025 ISO update is out today for CachyOS, the Arch based Linux distribution known for its aggressive out-of-the-box performance on modern hardware.

NVK Now Vulkan 1.4 Conformant For NVIDIA Maxwell GPUs

([Mesa] 22 April 02:01 PM EDT Vulkan 1.4)

Mesa's NVK Vulkan driver had been Vulkan 1.4 conformant for Turing and newer GPUs, but now with Mesa 25.2-devel it's Vulkan 1.4 conformant going back to Maxwell GPUs. This change is exported to be back-ported to the upcoming Mesa 25.1 release as well for those interested in using this open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver.

AMD Ryzen AI Max 300 "Strix Halo" Graphics IP Versions Confirmed

([AMD] 22 April 12:27 PM EDT AMD Ryzen AI Max 300)

For those that have been wondering about the Linux support and more details around the Ryzen AI Max 300 "Strix Halo" APUs on Linux, here's a brief update.

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" Performance On Linux Has Improved A Lot Since Launch

([Processors] 22 April 10:00 AM EDT 15 Comments)

Today's Linux benchmarking at Phoronix is looking at how the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K performance has evolved since its launch last October. Taking the launch-day benchmarks from October with the same hardware, we are revisiting the Intel Arrow Lake performance under Linux today using the newest system BIOS and the newly-released Ubuntu 25.04 for seeing how the performance has evolved roughly over the past half-year.

GCC Compiler Adds Targeting Support For XuanTie RISC-V CPUs

([GNU] 22 April 09:41 AM EDT GCC + XuanTie)

One of the early features being merged for what will become the GCC 16 compiler following last week's GCC 15 code branching is CPU targeting support for the XuanTie RISC-V processors.

Kmemdump Proposed For The Linux Kernel To Help With Memory Dumping & Debugging

([Linux Kernel] 22 April 08:28 AM EDT Kmemdump)

Eugen Hristev of Linaro sent out a "request for comments" patch series today proposing kmemdump for the Linux kernel as a new means to assist in debugging driver/system problems by making it easier to dump memory for specific areas/regions.

Linux Being Patched For Buggy MWAIT Behavior On Intel Ice Lake Servers

([Intel] 22 April 06:59 AM EDT Buggy MWAIT)

The Linux kernel has seen safeguards for select prior Intel CPU cores due to bugs around the MONITOR/MWAIT implementation with the processors. MWAIT/MONITOR bugs was found to be the cause of annoying issues at boot for Lunar Lake laptops and also previously plagued Goldmont Atom cores. It also turns out that Ice Lake servers can be subject to similar MWAIT/MONITOR behavior.

Intel Vulkan Linux Driver Begins Prepping For Ray-Tracing Changes With Xe3

([Intel] 22 April 06:34 AM EDT Better Xe3 Ray-Tracing Presumed)

Merged yesterday to Mesa Git for next quarter's Mesa 25.2 release is an improvement for the Intel Vulkan ray-tracing code with an eye on next-gen Xe3 graphics hardware.