Phoronix
Independent Linux hardware news, graphics/compute drivers, benchmarks, and kernel developments.
Turtle Beach WaveFront ISA Sound Cards Seeing Suspend/Resume Support On Linux In 2026
Linux kernel development in 2026 has revived support for legacy ISA sound cards, with suspend and resume functionality now being added for the Turtle Beach WaveFront series. A patch queued in the for‑next branch will land in Linux 7.2, extending power‑management capabilities to the Maui, Tropez and Tropez Plus cards. The work follows recent merges for AMD InterWave and other 1990s audio drivers in Linux 7.1. All changes are being authored by open‑source contributor Cássio Gabriel.
Linux 7.1 Fixes Audio For The Steam Deck OLED After Being Broken 2 Years On The Upstream Kernel
The mainline Linux kernel has restored audio support for the Steam Deck OLED handheld with the upcoming Linux 7.1‑rc2 release. A regression introduced in the AMD ASoC driver for kernel 6.8 broke audio on the OLED model, while Valve’s custom Steam OS kernel...
AMD's GAIA Defaults To Better Model, Continued Improvements For Local AI
AMD released GAIA 0.17.5, an open‑source AI stack for Windows and Linux that runs locally on AMD CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs. The update replaces the 35‑billion‑parameter Qwen 3.5 model with the smaller, Apache‑2.0‑licensed Gemma 4 E4B—a 4.5‑billion‑parameter multimodal model with a 128 KB context window....
Linux 7.1-rc2 Bringing Some More Improvements/Fixes For Older AMD GPUs
The Linux kernel 7.1‑rc2 release incorporates a batch of DRM driver updates, most notably extensive AMDGPU fixes. Valve engineer Timur Kristóf added support for “harvested” GPUs, enabling the Radeon HD 7870 XT and similar legacy cards to run on mainline Linux for the first...
Steam On Linux In April Pulled Back From Its Record High Marketshare
Steam’s Linux user base surged to a record 5.33% in March 2026, driven by the Steam Deck’s popularity and Proton’s expanding compatibility layer. In April the share slipped to 4.52%, a modest 0.81‑point decline but still more than double the...
AMD Posts HDMI 2.1 FRL Patches For Their AMDGPU Linux Driver
AMD has submitted a series of patches to add HDMI 2.1 Fixed Rate Link (FRL) support to its open‑source amdgpu Linux driver. While the update does not yet provide the full HDMI 2.1 feature set—such as variable refresh rate or DSC—it introduces...
Linux Support Coming For The ASUS ROG RAIKIRI II: A $160 High-End Gaming Controller
ASUS has announced mainline Linux support for its premium ROG RAIKIRI II wireless gaming controller, priced around $160. The controller offers 1 kHz polling, TMR joysticks, dual‑mode triggers, and multiple connectivity options, including a PC/Xbox mode switch. A patch adding the necessary...
Intel Making More GPU Driver Improvements For Crescent Island With Linux 7.2
Intel is advancing driver support for its upcoming Crescent Island Xe3P GPU, a 160 GB‑vRAM inference‑optimized card aimed at enterprise AI workloads. Open‑source engineers have added system‑controller firmware support, OA performance‑monitoring tweaks, GT tuning fixes, and HWMON energy attributes to the...
Linux 7.0 Release, Age Verification Laws, Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 & Other April Happenings
April 2026 saw a flurry of open‑source milestones, highlighted by the stable release of Linux 7.0 with expanded hardware support, a self‑healing XFS, and the start of Linux 7.1’s legacy driver cleanup. The new kernel triggered a dramatic PostgreSQL throughput drop, while age‑verification...
3mdeb Gets More Bits Of AMD openSIL & Coreboot Working On Ryzen AM5 Motherboard
3mdeb announced a major milestone in its open‑source firmware effort for the MSI PRO B850‑P WiFi AM5 motherboard, getting USB controller initialization and PCIe enumeration working under Coreboot and AMD’s openSIL. The team fixed missing USB code in the Phoenix openSIL library, allowing...
CPPC V4 Support Being Worked On NVIDIA For The Linux ACPI Driver
NVIDIA engineers are adding Collaborative Processor Performance Control version 4 (CPPC v4) support to the Linux ACPI driver, extending the _CPC package from 23 to 25 entries. The new optional fields—OSPM Nominal Performance and Resource Priority—allow the operating system to signal nominal...
The Intel Lunar Lake CPU Performance Gains On Linux Over The Past Year
Benchmarking the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V in a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition shows notable CPU performance gains after a year of Linux updates. The original test on Ubuntu 25.04 used kernel 6.14, GCC 14.2 and Mesa 25.0, while the repeat on...
Valve Updates GameNetworkingSockets After Nearly Four Year Hiatus
Valve has released GameNetworkingSockets version 1.5, the first update since June 2022. The open‑source library, originally published in 2018, powers networking for titles like Counter‑Strike and Dota 2. v1.5 adds API extensions, peer‑to‑peer enhancements, better CMake support, security patches, and community‑driven Rust bindings....
IBM Updates Linux Patches For Introducing ARM64 KVM Virtualization On S390
IBM has posted a second iteration of Linux kernel patches that add ARM64 KVM virtualization support to its s390 (IBM Z) mainframe platform. The new series, still flagged as a Request For Comments, refines the initial April release by using symlinks...
AMD's Lemonade SDK 10.3 Now 10x Smaller By Getting Rid Of Electron
AMD’s open‑source Lemonade SDK 10.3 was released with major upgrades, most notably swapping Electron for the Rust‑based Tauri framework. This change shrinks the pre‑built Windows and macOS binaries from roughly 101‑107 MB to just 7‑9 MB, a ten‑fold reduction. The update also...
Proton 11.0 Beta 2 Updates VKD3D-Proton
Valve released Proton 11.0 Beta 2, the second iteration of its Steam Play compatibility layer built on Wine 11.0. The update refines Xalia to prevent lock‑ups with the EA App and resolves a low‑FPS regression that affected the intro cinematic of *They Are Billions*....
RADV Vulkan Driver Adds Memory Protection Using AMD Trusted Memory Zone
The Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver RADV now supports protected memory by leveraging AMD's Trusted Memory Zone (TMZ) hardware. This capability, exposed through Vulkan’s protectedMemory flag, arrives in the Mesa 26.2 merge request and targets newer Radeon GPUs. It allows applications...
Valve Confirms Steam Controller Release Date, $99 Price
Valve confirmed that its new Steam Controller will ship on May 4 at 10:00 AM PST, retailing for $99 in the United States. International pricing is set at CAD $149 (≈$110 USD), EUR 99 (≈$108 USD), AUD $149 (≈$96 USD) and £85 (≈$110 USD). The controller supports Linux, Windows, macOS...
Ubuntu Linux Will Begin Landing AI Features Throughout The Next Year
Canonical has released Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and unveiled an AI‑focused roadmap for 2026. The plan emphasizes embedding AI models that run locally on both desktop and server editions, starting with background enhancements and progressing toward more "AI‑native" capabilities. Features under consideration include...
AMD VPE 2.0 Support Merged For Mesa 26.2
AMD’s VPE 2.0 engine has been merged into the Mesa 26.2 graphics driver, paving the way for support on future RDNA 5 Radeon GPUs. The VPE engine, first introduced with RDNA 3.5 and expanded in RDNA 4, provides a general‑purpose copy engine for HDR...
D7VK v1.8 Continues Improving Legacy Direct3D Atop The Vulkan API
D7VK v1.8 was released this weekend, extending the Vulkan‑based translation layer for legacy Direct3D 7‑3 games. The update introduces CPU‑handled ProcessVertices calls, eliminating long‑standing rendering artifacts in many older titles. It also swaps the previous proxy presentation code for a...
The New Linux Kernel AI Bot Uncovering Bugs Is A Local LLM On Framework Desktop + AMD Ryzen AI Max
Greg Kroah‑Hartman’s new AI‑driven fuzzing bot, gkh_clanker_t1000, has been actively hunting Linux kernel bugs on a Framework Desktop equipped with an AMD Ryzen AI Max processor. Since April 7, the tool has helped merge nearly two dozen patches covering subsystems such as ALSA, HID,...
LACT 0.9 Released With UI Updates, Voltage-Frequency Curve Editor For NVIDIA
LACT, an open‑source cross‑vendor GPU management tool for Linux, has launched version 0.9. The update revamps the interface with libadwaita, making hardware details and overclock controls more accessible. A long‑awaited NVIDIA voltage‑frequency (VF) curve editor now lets users fine‑tune GPU...
Microsoft Reportedly Looking At Rebasing Azure Linux On Fedora
Microsoft’s internal Azure Linux, originally known as CBL‑Mariner, is reportedly being considered for a major overhaul that would rebase it on Fedora Linux. The shift aligns with Microsoft’s support for Fedora 45’s x86_64‑v3 micro‑architecture, which promises better performance for Azure workloads...
Linux 7.1 Brings Audio Support For The Line6 POD HD PRO & NexiGo N930W Webcam
Linux 7.1’s secondary sound pull expands the kernel’s audio hardware roster, adding native support for the Line6 POD HD PRO rack‑mount amp and enabling audio capture on the NexiGo N930W 1080p webcam. The update also introduces quirks for several laptop models, SPDIF...
LoongArch Improvements Land In Linux 7.1
The Linux 7.1 merge window incorporated a suite of enhancements for the LoongArch architecture, a Chinese CPU design derived from MIPS and RISC‑V. The updates add correct handling of CPU‑related vulnerabilities, new atomic instructions for the BPF JIT, and expanded...
Arm C1-Ultra Scheduling Model Merged For LLVM/Clang 23
Arm’s flagship C1‑Ultra scheduling model has been merged into the LLVM/Clang 23 development branch, extending compiler support beyond the earlier LLVM 22 enablement. The model, derived from the Neoverse V3 scheduler and refined using Arm’s software optimization guide, targets the Armv9.3‑A core...
HDMI FRL Support Achieved With Open-Source Nouveau For NVIDIA GPUs
The open‑source Nouveau driver for NVIDIA GPUs now supports HDMI 2.1 Fixed Rate Link (FRL), enabling higher refresh rates and resolutions on Linux systems. The implementation leverages the GPU System Processor (GSP) firmware, which handles most of the FRL workload, allowing...
Godot 4.7 Will Finally Have HDR Output, Including On Linux With Wayland
Godot 4.7, the open‑source game engine, adds native high dynamic range (HDR) output. The feature is available on Windows, macOS, iOS, visionOS and Linux when using Wayland, with Android support planned for a later update. HDR output enhances color depth and...
Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS Will Now Automatically Install HWE/OEM Kernel Packages
Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS now mirrors its desktop counterpart by automatically installing OEM and hardware enablement (HWE) kernel metapackages during the initial setup. The Subiquity 26.04 installer includes these packages when they match the detected hardware, while still allowing administrators...
Ubuntu Rust Coreutils Audit Revealed 113 Issues, Ubuntu 26.10 Aims For "100% Rust Coreutils"
Canonical announced an independent security audit of Ubuntu's Rust Coreutils, uncovering 70 CVEs and 73 additional issues for a total of 113 findings. Most of the vulnerabilities have been patched, and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS ships with Rust Coreutils 0.8 containing those...
Ubuntu Looks Toward More Snap-Based Devpacks Moving Forward
Canonical announced its roadmap for Ubuntu’s developer toolchains, extending the Snap‑based devpack model beyond Java, .NET and Go. The new plan envisions dedicated dev stacks for GCC, LLVM/Clang and Rust, plus additional packs for Python Conda, game engines and other...
Intel LLM-Scaler vllm-0.14.0-b8.2 Released With Official Arc Pro B70 Support
Intel released LLM‑Scaler vllm‑0.14.0‑b8.2, officially adding support for the Arc Pro B70 GPU. The update refreshes the Docker platform image to intel/llm-scaler-platform:26.18.8.2 and continues the Project Battlematrix push for multi‑GPU AI inference on Intel Arc hardware. The B70, a 32 GB VRAM card...
RADV Driver Enables Host Image Copy By Default For RDNA2 & Newer
The open‑source RADV driver now enables the Vulkan VK_EXT_host_image_copy extension by default on AMD RDNA 2 (GFX10.3) and newer GPUs. The change follows an update to AMD’s ADDRLIB library that adds AVX2‑based SIMD optimizations, boosting host‑to‑image upload speeds to roughly 20 GiB/s...
Linux 7.1 Lands Workaround For Arm C1-Pro Erratum
Linux kernel version 7.1 now incorporates a mitigation for a hardware erratum in Arm’s C1‑Pro CPU affecting its Scalable Matrix Extension (SME). The bug, identified as erratum 4193714 and tracked as CVE‑2026‑0995, could allow TLB invalidation to complete before SME...
Initial Linux Driver Patches For Smart Data Accelerator Interface "SDXI"
Initial patches for the Smart Data Accelerator Interface (SDXI) have been posted to the Linux kernel mailing list, marking the first vendor‑neutral driver implementation for memory‑to‑memory data movement offload. The driver targets PCIe‑hosted SDXI 1.0 hardware and complies with the latest...
AMD's GAIA Makes It Easier To Import/Export Custom AI Agents Across PCs
AMD released GAIA 0.17.3, its cross‑platform AI‑agent framework built on the Lemonade SDK. The update introduces portable custom agents that can be imported, exported, and bundled into a single installer, especially streamlined for Windows. It also adds a C++ library that...
Linux 7.1 KVM Adds "Very Experimental" Support For pKVM Protected Guests
Linux 7.1 merges a set of KVM enhancements across major architectures. On ARM, a very experimental pKVM protected‑guest mode isolates guest memory by unmapping pages from the host and using hypercalls, requiring a new kernel config and a protected‑mode boot...
Git 2.54 Released With New Experimental "Git History" Command
Git 2.54 has been released, featuring an experimental “git history” command that simplifies repository history rewriting. The new command supports “reword” and “split” sub‑commands, enabling in‑place commit message edits and interactive commit splitting. Additional enhancements include configurable hooks outside the...
Linux 7.1 Adds Some New PCIe Drivers While Nuking Some PCI Drivers
The Linux 7.1 kernel merge introduces a suite of PCIe driver updates, adding support for new hardware while retiring several legacy drivers. Notable additions include the ESWIN PCIe Root Complex and Andes QiLai SoC host controller drivers, as well as TLP...
Valve Developer Further Improves Old AMD GPUs: HD 7870 XT Finally Working On Linux
Valve engineer Timur Kristóf has released a series of AMDGPU driver patches that finally enable the Radeon HD 7870 XT to work under Linux. The fix addresses the GPU's partially disabled TCC cache, a legacy issue that prevented the harvested Southern Islands chip...
Intel QAT Zstd, QAT Gen6 Improvements Merged For Linux 7.1
The Linux 7.1 kernel merge introduced a major cryptography subsystem overhaul, highlighted by Intel QuickAssist (QAT) enhancements. QAT now offloads Zstandard (Zstd) compression on Gen4 and Gen5 chips, while Gen6 adds native compression and decompression support. Additional Gen6 features include...
Linux 7.1 Adds New AMD SMCA Bank Types, Presumably For Upcoming EPYC Venice
Linux 7.1’s kernel update expands the AMD Machine Check Exception (mce_amd) driver with ten new Scalable Machine Check Architecture (SMCA) bank types. The additions cover data‑acceleration front‑end and back‑end units, eDDR5 interconnects, and several secure‑processor components. While the patches do...
AMD FP-DSS Security Bug For Zen 1 CPUs Made Public, Linux Kernel Patched
A floating‑point divider state sampling (FP‑DSS) vulnerability has been disclosed for AMD Zen 1 and Zen 1+ processors, including early Ryzen and EPYC chips. The flaw is a transient‑execution issue that could let a locally‑privileged attacker extract data through the floating‑point divisor...
Valve Developer Lands RADV/ACO Changes For AMD's GFX11.7 / RDNA 4m
Valve’s Linux graphics team, led by engineer Rhys Perry, merged ACO compiler and RADV Vulkan driver updates to support AMD’s upcoming GFX11.7 GPU, branded as RDNA 4m. The changes extend Mesa’s RadeonSI Gallium3D and RADV drivers to include new shader capabilities...
Glibc Lands A Big Optimization For LoongArch CPUs
The GNU C Library (glibc) has merged a LoongArch‑specific patch that enables transparent hugepages (THP) aligned load segments by default for LoongArch64. Aligning ELF load segments to THP boundaries reduces TLB pressure and improves instruction fetch efficiency. Early benchmarks on...
Proton 11.0 Beta Released With More Games Playable On Steam Play
Valve and CodeWeavers have launched Proton 11.0 Beta 1, the first beta milestone for Steam Play’s compatibility layer, now built on upstream Wine 11.0. The update unlocks native Linux support for dozens of titles that previously required the experimental branch, including classics like Resident...
New Media Drivers Merged For Linux 7.1
The Linux 7.1 merge window has incorporated a substantial media subsystem update, adding new hardware support and driver enhancements. The uvcvideo driver now supports Intel RealSense D436 and D555 3D depth cameras and introduces the P010 pixel format. Upstream drivers for...
Intel Formally Announces Core Series 3 "Wildcat Lake"
Intel officially launched its Core Series 3 “Wildcat Lake” low‑end mobile processors, the first 18A chips positioned below the Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” SoCs. The lineup targets value‑oriented laptops, commercial devices and edge hardware, promising 47% higher single‑thread, up to...
AMD EDAC Driver In Linux 7.1 Adds Support For Zen 3 Rembrandt Hardware With ECC
The Linux 7.1 kernel now includes updated EDAC (Error Detection And Correction) drivers, adding support for AMD’s Zen 3 Rembrandt APUs (Family 19h Model 40h‑4fh) and enabling ECC memory error reporting. A concise three‑line patch expands the amd64_edac driver to cover these mobile processors, confirming...