AMD ROCm 6.2.4 is out today as the newest point release for this Radeon and Instinct open-source GPU compute stack.

Following the GIMP 3.0-RC1 tagging, the GIMP project has now put out their lengthy write-up outlining many of the new features to enjoy with this first release candidate of the much anticipated GIMP 3.0. Plus there is a few words about future releases when moving past the upcoming GIMP 3.0 stable.

Linux I/O expert and block/IO_uring maintainer Jens Axboe of Meta has recently revisited his patches around uncached buffered I/O. Back in 2019 the "RWF_UNCACHED" effort was started by Axboe to address a throughput cliff in performance once the page cache fills up. That work faded away but Axboe recently took to crafting a set of fresh patches for implementing uncached buffered I/O and they are showing extremely promising results.

Systemd 257-rc1 is out today as a big feature update for this release that brings many new features and other refinements to this key piece of the Linux operating system stack.

Ahead of tomorrow's availability of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor as the first Zen 5 CPU released with 3D V-Cache, today the review embargo lifts. Here is a look at how this 8-core / 16-thread Zen 5 CPU with 64MB of 3D V-Cache is performing under Ubuntu Linux compared to a variety of other Intel Core and AMD Ryzen desktop processors.

Patches for the Linux kernel over the past week are preparing for an SNC6 sub-NUMA clustering mode. This is the first time I've seen patches or mentions of an SNC6 mode compared to SNC 1/2/3/4 modes with existing processors.

The upcoming Mesa 24.3 graphics driver stack will deliver a very nice performance win with the Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver for aging RDNA1 "GFX10" graphics processors.

Yet another exciting feature expected to be merged for the upcoming Linux 6.13 cycle is the introduction of the Lazy Preemption model.

Intel's oneCCL open-source software that is the oneAPI Collective Communications Library focused on providing an efficient implementation of deep learning communication patterns is out with a new release.

The cURL 8.11 release is now available for this widely-used open-source software library and CLI utility used for downloads and supporting a variety of network protocols for file transfers. Most notable with cURL 8.11 is sporting official WebSockets support.

The long elusive GIMP 3.0 image editor that is a free software alternative to Adobe Photoshop has finally reached the release candidate phase of development.

Typically in my launch-day Linux reviews of new AMD EPYC processors I try to include results both of the performance determinism (default) and power determinism modes available with these server processors since opting in to the power determinism mode can allow for additional performance uplift at the cost of slightly higher power costs. With the AMD EPYC 9575F / 9755 / 9965 benchmarks and review I didn't have a chance to complete all of the power determinism runs in time for that review, but for those curious about power vs. performance determinism modes with the 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin" processors, here is a side-by-side comparison.

Upstreamed at the start of the year was the Imagination PowerVR open-source DRM kernel driver for newer Imagination Rogue GPUs. That upstream kernel driver is now being extended to cover the Imagination BXS-4-64 MC1 GPU.

Merged back in 2019 was the Fieldbus subsystem as a set of network protocols for real-time distributed control of automated industrial systems. But now five years later, Fieldbus is being removed from the mainline Linux kernel since the code hasn't been maintained.

Due to the possibility of DMA attacks from connected Thunderbolt devices, Linux and other platforms have built up safeguards over the years and different security levels for Thunderbolt to better protect systems having this high speed interface exposing PCIe. With the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel, the logic of the kernel is being enhanced to better detect and trust built-in Thunderbolt controllers.

LXQt 2.1 is now available as the latest feature release to this Qt-based lightweight desktop environment. Most significant with LXQt 2.1 is the introduction of the lxqt-wayland-session component.

Queued up over the past month into DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.13 kernel cycle has been initial support for Xe3 graphics to be found with Panther Lake processors. The initial Xe3 graphics driver support patches have been trickling in while the final drm-intel-next pull ahead of the Linux 6.13 merge window has readied support for actually being able to light up a display connected to Xe3 LPD graphics with Panther Lake.

To clear up the ever-growing stack of laptops, I recently bought a TOUPUWAN 30-Slot Laptop/Tablet Storage Cart. This laptop/tablet storage cart can accommodate 32 devices in total while slots for up to 30 laptops/tablets 16.3-inches in size. It does have built-in power strips as well to easily facilitate charging of the devices while securely stored away but for my purposes I was just looking for something to better organize the mess of laptops I only occasionally pull out when running new Linux laptop benchmarks.

The x86-simd-sort project from Intel has been an interesting open-source software effort for much faster number sorting by using AVX-512. There's been lightning fast number sorting with AVX-512 and AVX2 code paths also added to broaden the appeal in helping CPUs without AVX-512. Projects like Numpy have been making use of this library while today x86-simd-sort 6.0 was released and also comes a few days after PyTorch has begun using this library too.

Posted to the Linux kernel mailing list last week and now queued already via tip/tip.git's "x86/cpu" Git branch is support for a new AMD CPU feature we haven't heard about until now... ERAPS, the Enhanced Return Address Prediction Security.