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FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
319 stories archived
Today Marks 22 Years Of Phoronix For Linux Hardware Testing & Benchmarking
Today marks 22 years since I started Phoronix.com to focus on Linux hardware reviews. It's been quite a journey from the early state of Linux hardware support.....
Benchmarking The BORE Scheduler Performance With CachyOS Linux
Earlier this week I ran benchmarks of different CachyOS Linux kernel flavors that proved interesting from the performance overhead of their hardened kernel build to various other interesting performancr takeaways. One kernel flavor I hadn't tested though was their build with the BORE scheduler. Given the interest and feedback from Phoronix readers, here is an article focused on looking at the performance of the BORE scheduler for the Linux kernel on CachyOS.
Dave Airlie on Linux Kernel Maintenance (SE Radio)
The Software Engineering Radio podcast has put up an interview with graphics maintainer Dave Airlie . Much of what is in there will not be news to LWN readers, but it is an interesting overview of the life of a large-subsystem maintainer. I was talking to a few of the Rust people, and I thought: these are very young people, these are a group of people in their 20s, maybe 30s, they are a younger cohort of developers than the people I am normally used to dealing with. I thought there was maybe a good way we could bring these groups together. I think that having young people coming into the kernel using Rust is valuable... So I thought that I should be supportive of bringing Rust into the kernel.
Linux 7.1 + Mesa 26.1 Performance With The Radeon RX 9070 GRE, RX 9070 XT
With this week's launch day review of the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE, Ubuntu 26.04 with its Linux 7.0 and Mesa 26.0 default driver stack was used for testing. That choice was made since the Ubuntu 26.04 release is still fresh, the RDNA4-based RX 9070 GRE was working without issue there, and from other RDNA4 testing knowing there isn't much uplift from the in-development Linux 7.1 kernel or the current stable Mesa 26.1 OpenGL RadeonSI / Vulkan RADV drivers. But for those interested, here are those tests...
[$] Splicing out vmsplice()
The splice() and vmsplice() system calls are meant to improve performance for certain data-movement tasks by minimizing (or avoiding altogether) system calls and the copying of data. They also have a long history of security problems. The recent flood of LLM-discovered vulnerabilities has drawn attention, once again, to splice() and vmsplice() ; as a result, they may end up being removed altogether.
Linux 7.2 Will Be Able To Boot On Apple M3 Macs - But Far From Useful For End-Users
The upcoming Linux 7.2 mainline kernel is expected to be able to boot on Apple M3 devices including the M3-powered iMac and MacBook products. But before getting too excited it's still a long ways to go before it will actually be useful for any Apple M3 daily usage under Linux with the overall support at this stage still being very limited for these 2~3 year old Apple Macs...
One step forward, two steps back on CA age bill (EFF Deeplinks Blog)
The EFF has a blog post looking at a new bill in California that would exempt open-source operating systems from the Digital Age Assurance Act passed last year, but has problems of its own: While the open source exemption, if passed, would improve the law, the remaining amendments proposed by AB 1856 would require all web browsers and websites to request and collect users' ages. This is an expansion of last year's AB 1043's age-bracketing system that compounds its constitutional harms to users' speech, privacy, and security. [...] EFF understands this amendment to exempt open-source operating systems from the requirement to collect and transmit users' age-bracket data. That is a definite win for open-source developers. The bill is narrower now than it was before, and lawmakers clearly responded to concerns raised by EFF and the broader open-source community. Some important questions still remain—for example, it is unclear how the law would apply when an open-source operating system is incorporated into a commercial product or service. And, given the structure of where the exemption is placed under the "operating system provider" definition, lawmakers could stand to clarify that the exemption applies to open-source operating systems and applications. LWN covered California's age-attestation law in March.
Qualcomm Gets The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen11 Snapdragon X2 Laptop Working On Linux
For those interested in the prospects of running Snapdragon X2 laptops on Linux rather than Windows 11 on ARM, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen11 has emerged as one of the initial X2 laptops with tentative Device Tree handling to allow Linux to boot on this latest-generation Qualcomm-powered laptop,..
Blender 5.2 LTS Enters Beta With New Features
Blender 5.2 is now available in beta form for this leading open-source 3D modeling software...
AMD's GAIA Finally Has A Nice Multi-Device Experience For AI
AMD's GAIA open-source project geared for building AI agents that run locally on your PC is out with a significant new feature release for Windows and Linux systems...
Canonical Promotes Steam Snap to Stable on ARM64, With Plans to Rebuild It from Scratch Later
The current snap bundles FEX to emulate x86 Steam on ARM hardware, but that approach might be shortlived.
GCC Git Enables Additional Tuning For AMD Zen 6
In addition to Intel adjusting their Nova Lake and Diamond Rapids targets in GCC this week to deal with APX realities, AMD this week also adjusted some tuning bits for their Zen 6 "znver6" target...
systemd 261-rc3 Released With Individual Binaries Now Embedding dlopen ELF Metadata Note
The stable release of systemd 261 is quickly approaching for being found in H2'2026 Linux distributions...
Linux Foundation Wants Open Standards for What AI is Actually Costing You
The Tokenomics Foundation will work on vendor-neutral benchmarks for token spend, with backing from major players.
AMD Submits Its Long-Awaited HDMI 2.1 FRL Support For Linux 7.2 AMDGPU
It's happening! The long-awaited HDMI 2.1 Fixed Rate Link "FRL" support for handling higher resolutions and higher refresh rates on modern AMD Radeon graphics cards with the upstream AMDGPU open-source driver has been submitted to DRM-Next ahead of this month's Linux 7.2 merge window!..
Crown Engine 0.63 Restores Its OpenGL Renderer For Legacy Hardware Support
While not as well known as the likes of the Godot or O3DE open-source game engines, Crown Engine continues advancing as an open-source, C++-based game engine...
LLVM To Begin Offering Zstd-Compressed Binaries For "Significantly Reduced" Downloads
The LLVM project will begin offering Zstd-compressed archives of their binaries in addition to the existing XZ-compressed releases. LLVM developers are finding Zstd working out great with "significantly reduced" download sizes...
Steam Survey For May 2026 After Delay: Linux Just Under 4%
Back in March Steam on Linux skyrocketed to 5.33% with more than double the Steam gaming marketshare of macOS. Then for April Steam on Linux pulled back to a still-great 4.52%, well above the times when Steam on Linux was at 2% or less for many years. Now the May 2026 figures have been published overnight by Valve...
Widely-Used libinput Updated Due To Arbitrary Root Code Execution
The libinput input handling library used by both X.Org and Wayland environments on modern Linux desktops is out with a new security fix release. A new vulnerability is now public allowing for arbitrary root code execution...
[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for June 4, 2026
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: Front : MeshCore; x32 ABI; Open-source security; Package-manager metadata; More LSFMM+BPF coverage; Loadable crypto module. Briefs : Lightwell; jqwik protestware; RedHat package compromise; DistroWatch; Fedora election; Rust 1.96.0; rsync; Vim Classic 8.3; Quotes; ... Announcements : Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
3mdeb Keeps Making Progress On Their Coreboot + AMD openSIL Port To Ryzen MSI Board
Following thr 3mdeb consulting firm's recent release of their Dasharo build of Coreboot and AMD openSIL for the Gigabyte MZ33-ARI1 EPYC 9005 series motherboard, the same engineers continue working on their port of Coreboot and the openSIL CPU silicon initialization library to a Ryzen 9000 series consumer motherboard...
COSMIC Now Implements Wayland Pointer Constraints For Better Gaming Experience
COSMIC Epoch 1.0.15 was released today and while it doesn't yet contain the new "Frosted Glass" option for the desktop UI, COSMIC Epoch 1.0.15 does contain some other notable enhancements...
Tuta Joins Other European Companies Under the Euro-Office Umbrella
The growing coalition is days away from shipping Euro-Office's first stable release.
AMD EPYC 8635P "Sorano" Benchmarks: Significant Upgrade Opportunity For EPYC 8004 Servers
After announcing the AMD EPYC 8005 "Sorano" series back in February, AMD recently began shipping these Zen 5 successors to the EPYC 8004 "Siena" line-up. With the EPYC 8005 product stack ranging from 8 to 84 cores and being drop-in upgrades for EPYC 8004 servers after a BIOS update, these are quite some interesting processors for those after a single socket, performant server. Up today are benchmarks of the EPYC 8635P as the flagship 84 core Sorano CPU.