Best of Phoronix — 2024
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Phoronix·2y
COSMIC Desktop Very Close To Alpha Release, Adds Compositor Multi-Threading
System76 is nearing the alpha release of COSMIC, a new Rust-written Linux desktop environment designed for Pop!_OS and other Linux distributions. Final touches are being made, including the addition of multi-threading to the compositor for enhanced performance. This development is closely followed by Michael Larabel, the founder of Phoronix.com and a prolific writer on Linux hardware and performance topics.
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Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance For The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 Review
A performance comparison between Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on an ASUS Zenbook S16 equipped with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 SoC. Tests were conducted using pre-loaded Windows 11 with all updates and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with an upgraded Linux 6.10 kernel and other necessary firmware updates. No power monitoring results are included.
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Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 24.10 Performance For Intel Core Ultra 7 Lunar Lake Review
Benchmarks comparing CPU and system performance of the ASUS Zenbook S 14 with Intel Core Ultra 7 256V under Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.10 were conducted. The tests aimed to determine which operating system performs better on this Lunar Lake laptop, leveraging 4 P cores and 4 E cores with a maximum turbo frequency of 4.8GHz, and 16GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory.
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Archinstall 2.8.3 Arch Linux Installer Adds COSMIC Desktop Option
Archinstall 2.8.3 introduces a COSMIC desktop profile option, adding support for the Rust-written desktop environment by System76, originally for Pop!_OS. The COSMIC desktop profile is currently available in an alpha state and can be accessed using the --advanced settings flag.
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Linus Torvalds Comes Out Against "Completely Broken" x86_64 Feature Levels
Linus Torvalds has strongly opposed the introduction of x86_64 micro-architecture feature levels, describing them as unofficial, technically incorrect, and unnecessarily complex. He criticizes the use of version naming like 'v2', 'v3', 'v4' and argues that relevant information should come from CPUID bits, which are a real model for microarchitectural features.
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Cloudflare Continues To Praise Open-Source OpenBMC
Cloudflare highlights its successful experiences using OpenBMC, an open-source firmware for Baseboard Management Controllers (BMCs), across its global server fleet. The blog post describes how the collaboration with the OpenBMC community and various vendors has improved system reliability and allowed Cloudflare greater control over server management. The team encourages others to adopt open-source firmware based on their positive experiences.
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Rust-Written Redox OS Now Has A Working Web Server
Redox OS, an open-source operating system written in Rust, has achieved several milestones in July, including the implementation of a Simple HTTP Server and progress on the Apache HTTP server. Additional achievements include the wget program functioning on Redox OS, improvements to the COSMIC desktop apps, build system enhancements, ARM64 kernel improvements, UEFI upgrades, and various driver fixes.
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Apple M4 Mac Mini With macOS vs. Intel / AMD With Ubuntu Linux Performance Review
Apple recently released their latest M4-powered Mac Mini, starting at under $600 and featuring a new compact design with significant updates, including a 10-core GPU and 16GB of unified memory. Preliminary benchmarks compare its performance to AMD Ryzen and Intel Core CPUs running Ubuntu Linux. The new Mac Mini offers various configurations, with the highest-end model featuring 12 CPU cores, 24GB of memory, and a 16-core Neural Engine. Asahi Linux support for Apple's M4 hardware is still in development but shows promise for future testing and compatibility.
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Linus Torvalds Begins Expressing Regrets Merging Bcachefs
Linus Torvalds expresses regret over merging Bcachefs into the Linux kernel, criticizing the continuous development during release cycles and questioning its stability and suitability for the upstream kernel. He suggests that Bcachefs' current state may not align with the normal upstream kernel release schedule requirements.
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Linux Kernel Performance Bottlenecks Spotted By Mold Developer
The developer behind Mold has pointed out several performance bottlenecks in the Linux kernel. Key issues include a significant delay in the `exit(2)` system call for large processes, slower write speeds to new files compared to existing ones, and the lack of a safe, system-wide semaphore. These observations are based on tests where Mold could link a 4 GiB LLVM/clang executable much faster when overwriting an existing file compared to creating a new one.
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Archinstall 3.0 Overhauls The Text-Based Arch Linux Installer
Archinstall 3.0 now uses the curses library to improve the text user interface, allowing for more complex layouts and a familiar look. This update also includes various code quality improvements, fixes, and other enhancements. Additional details and downloads are available on GitHub.
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Linus Torvalds Addresses His Latest ARM64 Annoyance: Installing Compressed Kernel Images
Linus Torvalds addresses the annoyance of installing compressed kernel images on ARM64, noting that the traditional 'make install' command installs the non-compressed version, while 'make zinstall' installs the compressed one. The inconsistency, especially given years of using 'make install', is frustrating. Torvalds and Will Deacon discuss the challenges associated with bootloader support for compressed images, suggesting a new 'COMPRESSED_INSTALL' option to resolve the issue without disrupting existing systems.
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Hyprland 0.43 Wayland Compositor Releases, Raises Build Requirements To C++26
Hyprland 0.43 has been released, introducing animation improvements, new configuration options, and several fixes. This version raises build requirements to C++26, necessitating GCC 14+ or LLVM Clang 18+ compilers. Users can find the update and additional details on GitHub.
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Reimplementing A Linux Rust Scheduler In eBPF Shows Very Promising Results
Prototyping new schedulers in user-space using Rust and then re-implementing them in eBPF proves to be an effective workflow for designing specialized schedulers. The rapid edit/compile/test cycle enabled by technologies like sched_ext allows for faster, meaningful development. This method demonstrates the potential for transitioning development from Rust user-space to BPF for better performance and suggests a step toward modular scheduling in Linux.
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