During the past month on Phoronix were 284 original news articles and another 19 featured Linux hardware reviews/multi-page benchmark articles. A lot of exciting happenings both on the hardware and software fronts while October is sure to be another interesting month with the releases of Ubuntu 26.10, Fedora 45, and some more hardware fun.

Thanks to those in September that participated in the Phoronix Oktoberfest/autumn promotion to help encourage more readers to join Phoronix Premium for enjoying the site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and other benefits all while helping me to be able to continue producing all the daily original content and benchmarks on Phoronix. If you missed out on the promotion you can still join premium or tips via PayPal or Stripe or at least doing the fair thing of not engaging any ad-blockers.

When it came to the most popular news on Phoronix in September it included:

Debian Inference Portal Launches To Provide Free AI/LLM Inferencing To Debian Developers
With Debian voting to allow the responsible use of generative AI, there is now a new initiative funded by Scaleway to make it easier for Debian contributors to leverage AI: the Debian Inference Portal.

CERN Transitioning Industrial Computers To Debian After Being A Longtime RHEL Institution
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, besides being well known for its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is known among longtime Linux users as a RHEL/CentOS shop. CERN formally even co-maintained the Scientific Linux RHEL derivative with other educational/research institutions in the past. So to much surprise now, CERN is transitioning to Debian Linux for industrial accelerator-control computers.

Asahi Linux Now Officially Supports Apple M3 Macs - With Caveats
Asahi Linux developers announced today that they are now officially supporting the Linux distribution on Apple M3 powered Macs. With the exception of the Mac Studio M3 Ultra, other M3 / M3 Pro / M3 Max devices should now work with the latest Asahi Linux builds but with some feature caveats.

Void Linux Maintainer Orphans 100+ Packages Over AI Policy Dispute
A Void Linux maintainer has orphaned more than 100 packages he maintained over a dispute of the project's AI policy for LLM-generated text.

Fedora Discussion Raises The Idea Of Replacing LibreOffice With Collabora Office
One of the livelist Fedora Discourse community discussions in recent days -- or even in quite a period of time for that matter -- comes down to a user having suggested that Fedora replace LibreOffice by default with the downstream Collabora Office.

Intel Reverses Decision To Cancel Their Open-Source Font Project
Amid Intel cutting back on open-source projects over the past two years as cost cutting measures at the company, their latest open-source project on the chopping block was the peculiar font they developed a few years back. The project was archived this week only to change course two days later.

Valve Introduces Pyrowave Video Codec In Beta For Low Latency Streaming
Valve's Steam client beta today introduced Pyrowave as an experimental video codec for high bandwidth, low-latency video streaming.

Linux Patches Posted For Initial Enablement Of The Apple A18 Pro + MacBook Neo
In addition to Linux developers focused on Apple Silicon being busy enabling functionality for the M3 and newer SoCs under the Linux kernel, there are also developers working on enabling the A18 Pro SoC used by the new, budget-friendly MacBook Neo laptop. Patches were posted this week for initial enablement of the A18 Pro and the MacBook Neo Device Tree... But even with these patches, the Linux support is still severely limited for now.

Simple Optimization For Linux 7.4 Can Open Files For Reading ~39% Faster
More than two years in the making, Linux 7.4 is poised to introduce a patch that amounts to a rather simple optimization to avoid unnecessary/duplicative work that can net some nice gains when opening files for reading.

DLSS5VKLayer Wires Up NVIDIA DLSS 5 For Native Linux Games & Steam Play
An interesting new open-source project for those looking to make use of NVIDIA DLSS 5 on Linux is DLSS5VKLayer. The DLSS5VKLayer is a Linux Vulkan layer that works for both native Linux games as well as Steam Play (Proton) Windows games for experimental DLSS 5 support.

Mysterious x86 CPU Already Has APX, x86S Where Intel Left Off For Legacy-Free x86
The mystery deepens around an x86 implementation from a corporate entity other than AMD and Intel and has been making some very intriguing changes for coming from a seeming start-up. Beyond 16 tile and 32 tile AMX implementations that already surpass Intel's current Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) capabilities in shipping Xeon CPUs, new disclosures were made today concerning Advanced Performance Extensions (APX), Flexible Return and Event Delivery (FRED), and even x86S as the effort that Intel previously stopped for cleaning up the x86 baggage.

KDE's KWin Merges Wayland Commit-Timing Protocol Support
Merged today to the latest KDE KWin compositor development code is support for Wayland's important commit-timing protocol that is useful for video playback as well as for gamers relying on Adaptive-Sync/FreeSync support.

Google's "Painful To Maintain" Binder C Linux Driver Being Removed In Favor Of Rust
Google's Binder driver written in the C programming language has long been part of the mainline kernel as the inter-process communication (IPC) mechanism used on Android. The past few years the Binder driver was rewritten in Rust as one of the first "real" drivers in the Rust programming language. The Rust Binder driver was upstreamed in Linux 6.18 and now for the upcoming Linux 7.4 kernel cycle, the old Binder C-based driver is set to be retired.

Ikey Doherty Plans To Show How To "Properly" Build A Modern Linux Distro
Ikey Doherty is back in the Linux distribution space. Sort of. Ikey Doherty who was the founder of the Solus Linux distribution as well as Serpent OS (now AerynOS) as well as having been employed by Intel on their Clear Linux team is back at it again in the Linux space.

Linux Patched For Silent User-Space Data Loss Bug That's Existed Since 2023
Being merged after yesterday's Linux 7.3-rc3 release was an important fix for addressing a silent, user-space data loss bug that has existed in the kernel the past three years.

NetworkManager Works To Enforce AI Policy By Tricking AI Agents To Add A Canary
Last month the NetworkManager project adopted an AI coding policy where authors are responsible for 100% of the code they submit and must be able to explain it all. In an attempt to catch AI coding agents that may be trying to bypass their policy, they have added an interesting canary to the project to try to catch such AI-generated patches so they can then be automatically dealt with.

AI Made A Lot Of "Hideous" Code But Found Major Bottlenecks For Faster Linux Compilation
An ARM Linux engineer leveraged AI/LLMs to help uncover some improvements to "significant speed up" the Linux kernel build times. In the process the LLM used generated "a lot of code, much of it hideous" but in the end was used to find some very significant time savings for faster kernel builds via more task parallelization in different areas of the kernel build process.

Patches Ready For AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 Enabled By Default With Linux 7.4 With FreeSync, VRR & ALLM
Linux 7.4 is now set to reach the elusive milestone of HDMI 2.1 support for the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver. After the HDMI Forum previously rejected HDMI 2.1 for the AMDGPU open-source driver implementation going back years, earlier this year something changed -- widely speculated to be with Valve's involvement -- that HDMI 2.1 patches began appearing for the AMDGPU driver. With the upcoming Linux 7.4 cycle, the bulk of that work will now be in place and enabled by default.

GNOME Mutter 51.rc Adds Cross-GPU Buffer Scan-Out Support, Other Last Minute Work
The release candidates are out today for the GNOME Shell and Mutter in preparing for the formal "GNOME 51.rc" release in the coming days.

AMD Working To "Push Rust Deep Into The GPU Stack"
AMD is building out what they are describing as an "elite" team of developers for driving Rust code "deep into the GPU stack" from firmware to drivers, shader compilers, and other GPU software in Rust.

And the most popular hardware reviews for the month:

CachyOS vs. Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS On Intel Wildcat Lake + 8GB RAM
Often times when testing different Linux distributions or comparing Windows vs. Linux it's on leading flagship desktop or server hardware, but today we are looking at the Ubuntu vs. CachyOS vs. Windows performance at the opposite end of the spectrum. With the new CHUWI UniBook $449 laptop powered by Intel Core 3 Wildcat Lake and with 8GB of system memory, here is a look at how those three operating systems compare across a variety of workloads.

Intel Xeon 600 Workstation Performance vs. AMD Threadripper 9000 In Nearly 400 Benchmarks
Last month I had the chance to test the Xeon 678X workstation processor as my first hands-on opportunity with the Xeon 600 "Granite Rapids WS" series. The Intel Xeon 678X was within the HP Z4 G6i workstation and used it for a number of different benchmarks. In that HP workstation review were also some comparison points to the likes of AMD Ryzen Threadripper while in this article are some much more concentrated benchmarks between the competing Xeon 600 series and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series for workstations. Nearly 400 benchmarks plus power and frequency comparison too.

Ubuntu 26.10 amd64v3 Can Provide A Nice Boost For Low-End/Budget Hardware
Canonical recently began producing Ubuntu 26.10 amd64v3 daily ISOs to complement their experimental amd64v3 package archive that they have been trialing the past few release cycles. While we still don't know what any official plans are for amd64v3 with Ubuntu 26.10, the performance gains can be very worthwhile over the generic amd64 binaries even for low-end/budget hardware.

Benchmarking Java Performance Of JDK 8 Through OpenJDK 27
With the recent release of Java/OpenJDK 27 I began some fresh benchmarks in not having looked at the OpenJDK Java performance in a few years. Carried away, I ended up re-testing all the major OpenJDK versions going back to the venerable JDK 8.

Running AMD openSIL + Coreboot On The First Available Ryzen AM5 Motherboard
Earlier this year the 3mdeb firmware consulting firm ported AMD openSIL CPU open-source silicon initialization library and Coreboot to an EPYC motherboard, the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1. Their next feat now achieved is bringing AMD openSIL and Coreboot to a desktop AMD Ryzen motherboard with their downstream Dasharo firmware solution. I have been running this alternative firmware on the MSI PRO B850P WiFi motherboard and it's been working out and performing well as an alternative to the closed-up motherboard firmware.

Approaching A 10 Second Linux Kernel Build
The coffee window is closing. Going back many years with the time it's taken to compile the Linux kernel has been a well known opportunity for a coffee break or even eating a meal during the lengthy Linux kernel build process. Even when the Linux kernel was much smaller than it is today, with the hardware at the time it would often be a very time consuming process... Thus incredible to think that we are now on the horizon of a ten second clean, default kernel build on Linux x86_64.

AMD Boosting AI/LLM Performance For Radeon iGPUs As Much As 18~23% With Linux 7.4
If you have an AMD Ryzen laptop/desktop and looking to leverage AI/LLM capabilities with the integrated graphics, Linux 7.4 is going to be a real treat especially for lower-end hardware. AMD's new PerfOpt feature being introduced in Linux 7.4 is set to provide some solid gains as shown in these benchmarks today across different AMD Ryzen/Radeon hardware.

CHUWI UniBook With Intel Wildcat Lake For A $449 Linux-Friendly Laptop
CHUWI recently launched the UniBook laptop powered by the Intel Core 3 304 "Wildcat Lake" SOC and priced at just $449 USD. Especially with today's high component pricing, a brand new sub-$500 laptop is extremely rare. Rather than using some dated SoC, it uses Wildcat Lake as Intel's new value option alternative to the Core 3 Series Ultra "Panther Lake" SoCs. This was our first time testing out Intel Wildcat Lake and that SoC plus the overall CHUWI UniBook has been working out well on Linux for those looking at a laptop in the sub-$500 space.

AMD Strix Halo Enjoys Some Performance Gains On Ubuntu 26.10, Especially With amd64v3
Ahead of next week's Ubuntu 26.10 beta release I have been testing the "Stonking Stingray" on a variety of systems. Ubuntu 26.10 is performing well overall with some nice upgrades over Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, especially if opting to use the new snapshot/daily ISOs of Ubuntu 26.10 in amd64v3 form for x86_64-v3 packages. In today's tests are a look at the performance benefits of Ubuntu 26.10 on an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo".

Intel Granite Rapids WS vs. AMD Threadripper Zen 5 SMT Performance
As a follow-up to the article earlier this month of the Intel Xeon 600 workstation performance against AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series in over 400 benchmarks -- including when carried out at the same core count and memory configuration -- today's article is exploring the Hyper Threading / SMT impact on both the Intel Redwood Cove and AMD Zen 5 cores for workstations.