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FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
663 stories archived
PINE64 pulls the plug on Linux devices because of AI boom
If you’ve been eyeing up one of PINE64‘s Linux-friendly single-board computers, phones or tablets, now is the time to buy one. The open-hardware company has announced it will stop “producing more Linux devices” for the time being, and said it expects its existing stock of certain devices, including the PineNote and PineTab 2, to sell out in the next three months. Obviously, RAMaggeddon is to blame. The AI infrastructure boom continues apace, with demand for memory and storage chips continuing to reduce supply and drive up costs. If the price of even modest tech – $350 Raspberry Pi, anyone? – […] You're reading PINE64 pulls the plug on Linux devices because of AI boom , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
[$] Representing Python paths using pathlib
At the outset of his PyCon US 2026 talk, Trey Hunner said that his goal was for attendees to stop representing filesystem paths as strings and to use pathlib instead. That's kind of a tall order, at least for longtime Python users, since string-based paths have been pervasive—and mostly work. It is that "mostly" part that makes Hunner want to see things change, of course, so he set out to describe a lesser-known corner of the language and to try to change some minds.
AMD EPYC 9005 Series Memory Scaling Performance From 4 To 24 DDR5 RDIMMs
With today's memory prices, a frequent question at Phoronix and throughout many organizations is about reducing cost by not necessarily populating all memory channels. Especially with modern servers going up to 12 memory channels per socket or even 16 memory channels with upcoming EPYC Venice, you may be curious about the performance impact of populating less memory channels to see if the trade-off is worthwhile given today's DDR5 RDIMM pricing. In this article are benchmarks from a Dell PowerEdge server looking at a dual AMD EPYC 9655 2P configuration when testing between four and the full twenty-four DDR5-6400 RDIMM configuration and the resulting performance impact in more than 250 benchmarks.
XWayland 26.1 RC1 Released With Many New Features
Olivier Fourdan of Red Hat announced today the first release candidate of XWayland 26.1. This is the first new tagged feature release since XWayland 24.1 back in 2024! As such there are many new features in tow...
Linux 7.3 Deprecates Many Older 32-bit ARM Platforms, Orphans Hundreds Of Drivers
All of the SoC updates have been merged for the Linux 7.3 kernel that include adding some new SoCs as well as deprecating several older 32-bit ARM platforms. In turn with those platforms deprecated, "hundreds" of drivers are now orphaned in the process...
Murena Just Made The Fairphone (Gen. 6) Better!
A new variant of the modular smartphone now offers 12GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 upgrade.
PHP 7.4 To PHP 8.6 Benchmarks, PHP 8.6 JIT Performance
A Phoronix Premium supporter recently relayed a request to see some fresh PHP performance benchmarks. So here are some fresh numbers of PHP 7.4 through the latest PHP 8.5 code plus the current Git state of PHP 8.6 ahead of the official PHP 8.6.0 release later in the year. With PHP 8.6 is also a fresh look at the JIT performance enabled too...
Linux 7.3 Scheduler Improvements: Help For Gaming, Hybrid CPUs, Lower Scheduler Latency
The exciting set of scheduler updates have been merged for the Linux 7.3 merge window...
New AMD Low-Power Core & Unified Intel/AMD CPU Core Type Handling In Linux 7.3
Covered first on Phoronix back in June was an AMD Linux patch for introducing a new "low power" CPU core type to complement their typical "performance" cores and their "efficiency" cores like with Zen 4C/5C. That low power core is presumed for some Zen 6 clients and that integration is now merged for Linux 7.3 as well as unifying the Intel/AMD CPU core type handling...
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Programming Jig Launches
The newest Raspberry Pi product to launch is the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Programming Jig...
Modular's Mojo Language Now Open-Source Following Qualcomm Acquisition
Modular, the AI startup founded by Chris Lattner of LLVM and Swift fame, has open-sourced their Mojo systems programming language! This comes following the recent acquisition of Modular by Qualcomm...
COSMIC Epoch 1.6 Released With Per-App Volume Control, Remote Desktop Preparations
COSMIC Epoch 1.6 was released this evening as the latest milestone for this open-source, Rust-based desktop environment led by System76 as part of the work on their Pop!_OS Linux distribution...
Firefox 154.0 released
Version 154.0 of the Firefox browser has been released. Changes include extending local network access protections to WebSocket connections, more flexible, per-site configuration of cookie and data clearing, and more.
Linux 7.3 Adds New "bpf_sock_read_xattr" Feature For systemd, BPF Programs
Merged earlier this year for Linux 7.1 was extended attributes on sockets support as a feature sought after by the likes of GNOME and systemd for helping with Varlink IPC usage and other purposes. A limitation though of the functionality has been no efficient means for a BPF program to read those user extended attribute labels back. But with Linux 7.3 that's being addressed with the new bpf_sock_read_xattr() kernel function...
IOmap Improvement For Linux 7.3 Takes EXT4 & XFS Performance Further
As part of the VFS pull requests now merged to the Linux 7.3 development kernel was an improvement to the IOmap framework used by various file-systems for mapping logical file byte offsets in memory to their physical locations on storage. With the now-merged code, this modern block mapping framework is allowing better performance at least for the EXT4 file-system...
Framework Laptop 12 Updated For Intel Wildcat Lake, Shipping Starts In October
Last year Framework Computer launched the Framework Laptop 12 as an upgrade-friendly and Linux-compatible 2-in-1 laptop. The Framework Laptop 12 was originally powered by Intel Core 13th Gen "Raptor Lake" low-end processor while now Framework is adding Core Series 3 "Wildcat Lake" as an upgrade or for new Laptop 12 orders...
The CachyOS Performance vs. Other Linux Operating Systems On A $46k USD Workstation
Recently I looked at the performance of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS vs. Windows 11 on the Intel Xeon 678X running within the HP Z4 G6i workstation. Linux performed admirably as one would expect. With this Intel Xeon Granite Rapids WS workstation from HP though commanding a retail price more than $46,000 USD, you likely want nothing but the utmost performance out of it. So for those looking to maximize the OS performance, here are some numbers from the HP Z4 G6i workstation when running not only Ubuntu 26.04 LTS but also Fedora Workstation 44, AlmaLinux, and the performance-optimized CachyOS.
[$] Fedora prepares for the end of AF_ALG
The Linux kernel's user-space interface ( AF_ALG ) to the Crypto API has been linked to a number of recent high-profile security problems, including Copy Fail and successor vulnerabilities. It was deprecated earlier this year. Eric Biggers, and other kernel developers, have been working to remove it from the kernel . With that in mind, the Fedora Project is planning to restrict use of AF_ALG in the next Fedora release in the hopes of nudging remaining users of the API to prepare for its eventual removal.
Firefox 154 released with translation, AI feature and UI tweaks
Mozilla has released Firefox 154 with some small AI-related changes, an ‘improved’ full-page translations and up to 10x faster video seeking – only on macOS, that one. This also serves as the final monthly release of Firefox. The browser switches to a faster, twice-monthly release schedule early September. You’ll be back here, reading “Firefox 155 released” in two weeks, rather than the usual four weeks. Enough of then; what’s new now? Firefox’s been expanding its range of address bar actions in recent releases. We got tab muting action in v152 and an colour picker in v153. Firefox 154 adds a […] You're reading Firefox 154 released with translation, AI feature and UI tweaks , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Rust For Linux 7.3 Begins Seeing Fixes To Prepare For Rust's GCC Backend
In addition to the POWER/PowerPC code adding Rust kernel support, the main set of Rust programming language updates for the Linux 7.3 kernel have now been submitted. Most notable are early fixes toward eventually allowing the experimental Rust GCC back-end to be used as an alternative to the official rustc compiler with LLVM code generation...
Linux 7.3 Corrects Faulty Behavior Of FAT File-System Driver For Filenames Too Fat
It's not too often that the Linux FAT driver for FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 format support receives updates worth mentioning. For Linux 7.3 there is one patch though and it's due to the driver until now lacking an upper-bounds check on the length of the filename, which could lead to some unexpected situations with extremely long filenames...
The Xen Project is Serious About Safety, So It Formed a Committee
Founding members AMD, EPAM, and Renesas already put in the groundwork, and there's a new Premier Plus membership tier to go with it.
Fedora x86-64-v3 Optimized Packages Pushed Back To At Least Fedora 46
There was a proposal under discussion the past few months on building x86-64-v3 packages for Fedora 45 while retaining x86-64-v1 packages. The hope was building the Fedora packages with x86-64-v3 where AVX/AVX2, FMA, BMI2, and other newer ISA features can be assumed in the name of better performance. Unfortunately, the x86-64-v3 plans are now delayed but may be reconsidered next year with Fedora 46...
Lenovo Lands New Watchdog Driver In Linux 7.3 For Their SE30G2 + SE60 Edge AI Computers
When it comes to the watchdog driver changes for Linux 7.3, standing out is the new Lenovo driver for their upcoming ThinkEdge AI edge computing systems...