The Khronos Group today published the OpenCL 3.0.18 specifications as the latest incremental update to OpenCL 3.0.

Last month I posted benchmarks showing the performance when using the new 3D V-Cache Optimizer driver on Linux using the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This optimizer driver allows tuning the "amd_x3d_mode" for indicating your preference for the CCD with the higher frequency or larger cache size. For some additional insight into the 3D V-Cache Optimizer driver performance impact on Linux, here are benchmarks looking at the difference while using the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D.

Two separate patch series updated this week for the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver stack is the still-ongoing work around the DRM sharpness property for the new adaptive sharpening filter with Xe2 Lunar Lake graphics and then separately is the work to bring VRAM Self Refresh (VRSR) over to the modern Xe kernel driver.

Among the changes that landed this week for the Linux 6.15 merge window were all of the memory management "MM" updates, of which there are several notable patch series included.

For those looking into some insight around the Intel neural processing unit (NPU) utilization with modern Core Ultra systems, pending Linux patches will finally introduce the ability for user-space to obtain the current NPU frequency.

Going back to 1972 is the General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB, a.k.a. IEEE-488) as a parallel interface bus developed by HP. GPIB pre-dates the Linux kernel itself while it wasn't until last year that the GPIB driver subsystem was added to the Linux kernel's staging area with GPIB still seeing some use by scientific equipment and other devices. For Linux 6.15, the GPIB code has seen a thorough round of code clean-ups and improvements.

All of the Device Mapper "DM" changes have been merged to mainline for the in-development Linux 6.15 kernel.

Rust 1.86 is now available today as the latest version of this popular programming language.

Not to be confused with the modern Compute Express Link (CXL) standard, but IBM's Coherent Accelerator Interface "CXL" / Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface "CAPI" support was stripped away today from the mainline Linux kernel.

Linux power management and ACPI subsystems maintainer Rafael Wysocki last week sent out the assortment of ACPI/PM material for the new Linux 6.15 kernel cycle. The AMD P-State driver continues to be heavy with its code churn and there have been various other optimizations and code clean-ups. The CPUIdle Menu governor also received some performance tuning worth mentioning.

Back in late February when Framework announced a slew of new hardware products they will be launching next year, they also teased the Framework Laptop 12 as a new, smaller laptop while continuing to be modular/upgradeable. They announced today that Framework Laptop 12 pre-orders will begin next week.

Last week I posted some initial GNOME 48 and KDE Plasma 6.3 desktop gaming benchmarks on Ubuntu 25.04 beta for looking at the performance of those two leading desktop options for this upcoming Ubuntu Linux release. Both GNOME and KDE under Wayland were outperforming KDE on X11 (and GNOME on X11 wasn't even working due to bugs). Some Phoronix readers questioned though whether the Wayland advantage on GNOME/KDE was due to those desktops losing focus on X11 support or if they are just too bloated. So for adding some additional context, here are some graphics/gaming benchmarks on the same system hardware/software when adding in the Xfce 4.20 and LXQt 2.1 X11 desktops.

This morning's Intel TDX update reminded me that I still hadn't gotten around to digging into the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes merged last week for the ongoing Linux 6.15 kernel merge window. Here is a look at the KVM changes this cycle that continue to be particularly heavy on Intel and AMD virtualization improvements.

Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) for providing hardware-backed isolation and confidential computing support for virtual machines (VMs) on modern Xeon processors is about to become more reliable and potentially faster for some workloads.

Merged last week for the Linux 6.15 merge window were a big set of scheduler updates.

Qt 6.9 was just released as the newest version of this open-source, cross-platform graphics toolkit.

KDE Plasma 6.3.4 shipped this morning as the newest monthly point release for the Plasma 6.3 desktop.

Intel's original DG1 discrete GPU was principally a development vehicle on the path to DG2/Alchemist. It did appear with the Iris Xe Max laptop dGPU in very few configurations but surprisingly it's taken until now where the Intel Linux graphics driver is set to remove the experimental "force_probe" flag on these pre-Alchemist discrete GPUs.

The Steam Survey results for February showed a 0.61% drop for Linux gaming marketshare following a 20.8% increase to the Chinese use, which was yet another month of such wild swings attributed to a large influx in Simplified Chinese survey respondents. The March results for Steam Survey were published this evening and show the Linux marketshare more than recovering now that the English survey results have shot back up.

There were 281 original news articles on Phoronix during the month of March along with another 14 Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured-length articles and benchmarks. Here is a look back at the most exciting Linux and open-source content over the past month, in case you missed any of the interesting hardware launches, open-source software milestones, kernel changes, and other milestones.