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Phoronix

Linux 6.12 To Linux 6.18 LTS Upgrade Offers Worthwhile Benefits For 5th Gen AMD EPYC

The recently released Linux 6.18 kernel is this year's Long Term Support version. As such it's sure to a see a lot of enterprise and hyperscaler uptake in being the annual LTS kernel version. While Linux 6.12 LTS will be maintained at least through the end of next year, upgrading to Linux 6.18 LTS can be very worthwhile from the performance perspective beyond the extended timeline until it will reach end-of-life. Here are benchmarks showing the performance advantages of upgrading from Linux 6.12 LTS to Linux 6.18 LTS for 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin" as well as an early look on the same server for the performance direction Linux 6.19 is bringing the kernel into 2026.

Phoronix

FUSE 3.18 Released With FUSE-Over-IO-uring, Statx Support

Linux creator Linus Torvalds previously referred to file-systems in user-space as for toys and misguided people. But FUSE has shown a lot of interesting use-cases over the years and has grown more capable in the decade since Torvalds' prior comments. Out today is FUSE 3.18 as the latest release for the FUSE library...

Phoronix

Intel's Linux NPU User-Space Driver Adds Panther Lake Support

Since late 2024 Intel has been working on 5th Gen NPU support for their Linux IVPU driver. That 5th Gen NPU support for Intel Core Ultra "Panther Lake" SoCs was upstreamed back in Linux 6.13. Now today the Intel Linux NPU user-space driver has seen its official support added for Panther Lake...

Phoronix

2025 Brought "Transformative Changes" For FreeBSD On Laptops

As we have been covering over the past year, major investments have been made to better the outlook for running FreeBSD on laptop hardware. From WiFi driver improvements to enhancing suspend/resume, power management, graphics drivers, and other features, it's been a big undertaking to make FreeBSD work better on laptops. The FreeBSD Foundation calls 2025 as having brought "transformative changes" for the FreeBSD laptop experience...

Phoronix

Vulkan 1.4.337 Debuts With Long Vector & 3D ASTC Compression Extensions

Vulkan 1.4.337 released a short time ago as what could be the last Vulkan API spec update of 2025 depending upon how much time the working group takes off or not around the holidays. In any case, it's a nice holiday treat with the new VK_EXT_texture_compression_astc_3d and VK_EXT_shader_long_vector extensions...