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)

SR-IOV Will Only Be Supported On Intel Arc Pro Graphics Cards

([Intel] 13 August 04:36 PM EDT SR-IOV Only For Arc Pro)

SR-IOV for virtualization with the Intel Xe kernel graphics driver will only be supported on the Arc Pro products and -- unfortunately -- not the consumer Arc B-Series graphics cards.



Linux Preps For New "SoC Power Slider" With Upcoming Panther Lake

([Intel] 13 August 03:18 PM EDT Panther Lake SoC Power Slider)

While it looked like Linux 6.17 was going to be a good baseline for support with upcoming Intel Panther Lake powered laptops given that this next kernel release ships with the Xe3 graphics enabled by default and other bits coming together, it looks like there is at least one late item only being presented today in patch form: a new "SoC Power Slider" feature as part of the Intel thermal driver for this new feature of Panther Lake SoCs.



Linux Lands Fix For Early 6.17 Regression Causing 37~43% Performance Hit

([Linux Kernel] 13 August 02:51 PM EDT Whoops)

Back during the Linux 6.17 merge window was an optimization geared for ARM64 that could have a "16x reduction" in the number of calls. Unfortunately that commit ended up causing a rather significant regression for some systems that has now been addressed.



Google Develops KFuzzTest For Fuzzing Internal Linux Kernel Functions

([Linux Kernel] 13 August 01:52 PM EDT KFuzzTest)

Google engineers today introduced KFuzzTest as a new lightweight framework for in-kernel fuzz targets for internal kernel functions. KFuzzTest aims to make it easier to exercise Linux kernel code paths that are difficult to do from the system call boundary.



Intel ISPC 1.28 Adds Optimized Support For AMD Zen 4 & Zen 5 CPUs

([Intel] 13 August 01:21 PM EDT Intel ISPC 1.28)

A new version of the Intel Implicit SPMD Program Compiler "ISPC" was just published for supporting that C programming language variant optimized for single program. multiple data (SPMD) programming that is optimized for Intel's various hardware offerings. While catering to Intel hardware, ISPC 1.28 notably adds new AMD Zen 4 and Zen 5 processor targets.



Intel IDXD Accelerator Driver Cleaned Up For Some "Not So Happy Code Paths"

([Intel] 13 August 08:31 AM EDT Memory Leaks & Other Fixes)

The IDXD Linux kernel driver used for the Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA) support on recent Xeon processors is being cleaned up for some "not so happy code paths" after an Intel engineer uncovered memory leaks and other troubles with the open-source driver code.



Clearing The Last ReiserFS Remnants: Documentation Cleanse Of The Defunct File-System

([Linux Storage] 13 August 08:18 AM EDT ReiserFS Documentation)

It was nearly one year ago in the Linux 6.13 kernel that the ReiserFS file-system was dropped from the mainline kernel after having been deprecated in 2022. That dropped 32.8k lines of code from the Linux kernel but some documentation remnants of ReiserFS were mistakenly left in but now in the process of dropping those remnants for the defunct file-system.



FFmpeg 8.0 Merges OpenAI Whisper Filter For Automatic Speech Recognition

([Multimedia] 13 August 06:52 AM EDT FFmpeg + Whisper)

The upcoming FFmpeg 8.0 multimedia library release continues to get more exciting almost by the day. The newest feature being squeezed into this next release is a Whisper audio filter for making use of OpenAI's Whisper model for providing automatic speech recognition / transcription capabilities.



WSL2 Vulnerability Could Lead To Elevating Local Privileges

([Microsoft] 13 August 06:41 AM EDT Windows Subsystem for Linux)

Last week Microsoft released new versions of WSL2 for a yet-to-be-public security vulnerability affecting their Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 implementation. Those details around CVE-2025-53788 are now public for this vulnerability that could lead to elevation of privileges.



xf86-input-mouse 2.0.0 Released 12 Years After v1.9 Mouse Driver

([X.Org] 13 August 06:30 AM EDT xf86-input-mouse)

The xf86-input-mouse driver for mouse support when using the X.Orrg Server on operating systems like the BSDs, Illumos, GNU Hurd, and Solaris is out with a rare update.



GCC Developers Discuss Dropping Poorly Supported, Niche CPU Architectures

([GNU] 13 August 06:15 AM EDT GCC Compiler)

Following the discussion over potentially obsoleting/deprecating the Itanium IA-64 support within the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), developers are discussing similar treatment for some of the other poorly-maintained CPU ports.



Go 1.25 Released With Experimental GC Yielding 10~40% Overhead Reduction

([Programming] 12 August 08:15 PM EDT Go 1.25)

Go 1.25 is out today as the newest half-year update to this popular programming language. What I find most exciting with Go 1.25 is the new experimental garbage collector yielding 10~40% reduction in overhead.



Linux Address Space Isolation "ASI" Revived After Lowering 70% Performance Hit To 13%

([Linux Security] 12 August 04:53 PM EDT ASI)

Several years ago Google engineers began exploring address space isolation for the Linux kernel and ultimately proposing Linux ASI for better dealing with CPU speculative execution attacks. While the hope was it would better cope with the ever growing list of CPU speculative execution vulnerabilities, the effort was thwarted initially by I/O throughput seeing a 70% performance hit. That level of performance cost was unsustainable. But now that I/O overhead has been reduced to just 13%.



Intel CPU Microcode Updates Released For Six High Severity Vulnerabilities

([Intel] 12 August 01:13 PM EDT Intel CPU Microcode)

This Patch Tuesday has brought a slew of Intel CPU microcode updates for the past few processor generations to address six new high severity vulnerabilities.



CodeWeavers CrossOver 25.1 Improves The Stability Of Microsoft Office On Linux

([Linux Gaming] 12 August 12:25 PM EDT CrossOver 25.1)

While most Linux gamers are content using Valve's Steam Play (Proton) these days for Linux gaming, a new release of CodeWeavers' CrossOver is now available for enjoying other Windows applications and games on Linux as well as macOS. CrossOver 25.1 enhances the stability of the Microsoft Office office suite on Linux among other changes.



Linux Kernel Patched For AMD SEV-SNP Cache Coherency Vulnerability

([AMD] 12 August 12:17 PM EDT SNP Cache Coherency Issue)

This Patch Tuesday the only new security fix merged to the Linux kernel is addressing a vulnerability affecting AMD SEV-SNP secure virtual machines.



Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 Released With Completed 64-bit Support, Rust Ported

([Debian] 12 August 09:25 AM EDT Debian Hurd 2025)

Following this weekend's release of Debian 13.0 "Trixie", Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 has been released as the state of Trixie while running atop Hurd rather than Linux.



AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 With Framework Desktop vs. Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Linux Performance

([Processors] 12 August 09:33 AM EDT 22 Comments)

Last week alongside our Framework Desktop review with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" SoC I posted benchmarks of the Strix Halo performance compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X / 9950X3D socketed desktop processors. For those wondering similarly how the top-end Strix Halo SoC in the Framework Desktop competes with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" flagship in performance and power efficiency, here are those comparison benchmarks.



NVIDIA 580.76.05 Linux Driver Updates EGL Bits, Adds New MetaMode Attribute

([NVIDIA] 12 August 08:51 AM EDT NVIDIA 580.76.05)

Following the NVIDIA 580 Linux beta driver from just one week ago, today NVIDIA issued a new R580 series Linux driver build.



ZLUDA Implements Kernel Cache Support To Help With Performance

([Free Software] 12 August 08:10 AM EDT ZLUDA Kernel Cache)

ZLUDA as the open-source solution bringing CUDA to non-NVIDIA hardware has been seeing a nice uptick in activity the past several months for its latest take on life. The latest feature merged to ZLUDA is the all-important kernel cache to help with performance.



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Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine.
-- Andy Warhol