During the past month on Phoronix were 249 original news articles and another 23 featured Linux hardware reviews and multi-page benchmark articles. There was a lot of interesting topics in April from the launch of the Framework Laptop 13 powered by AMD Strix Point, an interesting and cheap RISC-V board coming about, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 proving to be an interesting low-power Linux laptop, Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora 42 releasing, and much more.
Below is a recap of all the interesting highlights for April 2025 on Phoronix. Before getting to those most popular articles for the month, it’s time for the usual reminder… If you enjoy the original Linux/open-source-focused content put out each and every single day on Phoronix, please consider showing your support or at least not using any ad-blocker when viewing this site. Subscribing to Phoronix Premium allows for viewing multi-page articles on a single page, ad-free experience, native dark mode, and other benefits while supporting this site. Tips via PayPal and Stripe also are graciously accepted. Today’s macro environment only continues to add more pressure on the already tight web ad-based publishing industry, especially for the Linux niche where relying entirely on ad networks for the ad fill. Rampant ad-block use is a persistent sword in my side and just makes it all the more challenging for those looking at Phoronix for Linux hardware reviews, often exclusive performance tests, and other content seldom found elsewhere. Thanks for your support as Phoronix approaches its 21st birthday next month.
With that out of the way, the most popular featured articles/reviews for April included:
Framework 13 With AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series “Strix Point” Makes For A Great Linux Laptop
Today the review embargo lifts on the Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300 “Strix Point” SoCs: wow, what an upgrade! I’ve spent the past week testing out the Framework 13 with the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and it’s been terrific. Framework 13’s modularity continues to pay off and allows easily upgrading to the new Strix Point bearing motherboard with AMD Zen 5 CPU cores and the Radeon 890M (RDNA 3.5) integrated graphics. If you are on a fresh Linux distribution the support is in great shape and paired with great performance for delivering a great 2025 Linux laptop option.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Can Work Well As A Solid Linux Laptop
The Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Strix Point is now shipping that as detailed in our review earlier this month can provide for a very capable Linux laptop for Linux developers, creators, and enthusiasts. But for those hesitant about the high price and still weeks away before they have shipped all their pre-orders, if you are principally concerned about battery life, and/or after proven build quality backed by on-site warranty and other warranty/support options, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition ends up being a solid option for a very reliable and well-engineered laptop for Linux use. Here is a look at the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition on Linux that is powered by Intel Lunar Lake.
Ubuntu 25.04 vs. Fedora Workstation 42 Performance On AMD Strix Point
With both Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora 42 releasing this month you may be curious how these two Linux distributions are competing for performance. Well, it’s a very tight race for common Intel/AMD x86_64 hardware. In this article are some benchmarks looking at clean installs of Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora Workstation 42 on AMD Strix Point.
GNOME & KDE Plasma Wayland Sessions Outperforming Xfce + LXQt On Ubuntu 25.04 For Linux Gaming
Last week I posted some initial GNOME 48 and KDE Plasma 6.3 desktop gaming benchmarks on Ubuntu 25.04 beta for looking at the performance of those two leading desktop options for this upcoming Ubuntu Linux release. Both GNOME and KDE under Wayland were outperforming KDE on X11 (and GNOME on X11 wasn’t even working due to bugs). Some Phoronix readers questioned though whether the Wayland advantage on GNOME/KDE was due to those desktops losing focus on X11 support or if they are just too bloated. So for adding some additional context, here are some graphics/gaming benchmarks on the same system hardware/software when adding in the Xfce 4.20 and LXQt 2.1 X11 desktops.
Ubuntu 25.04 vs. Windows 11 CPU Performance For The AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360
Earlier this month was a look at the AMD RDNA 3.5 graphics between Windows 11 and Ubuntu 25.04 using a Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 “Strix Point” SoC within a Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6. That was an interesting benchmark battle and providing a fresh look at the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver stack relative to Radeon Software on Windows. For those curious about the current Zen 5(C) performance, today’s article are all of the CPU benchmarks for the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 performance under the newly-released Ubuntu 25.04 and Windows 11 as pre-loaded by Lenovo.
AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 Linux Performance With The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6
For those that are curious about the Linux support and performance of the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 laptop processor, I’ve recently been testing it out within a Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 (AMD) laptop. Up today are benchmarks of the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 within the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 up against an assortment of other recent Intel and AMD laptops all while running the near-final state of Ubuntu 25.04.
Orange Pi RV2 Benchmarks: The Most Performant RISC-V Board For Less Than $100 With 8 Cores + 8GB RAM
Earlier this month Canonical announced Ubuntu Linux support for the Orange Pi RV2 as a low-cost RISC-V developer board. The Orange Pi RV2 with eight RISC-V cores and 8GB of RAM costs just around $64 USD. The price point and specs were interesting that I ordered one and have been running performance benchmarks on it since for seeing how capable this is as finally an interesting, low-cost and readily available RISC-V board.
Intel Core Ultra 9 285K “Arrow Lake” Performance On Linux Has Improved A Lot Since Launch
Today’s Linux benchmarking at Phoronix is looking at how the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K performance has evolved since its launch last October. Taking the launch-day benchmarks from October with the same hardware, we are revisiting the Intel Arrow Lake performance under Linux today using the newest system BIOS and the newly-released Ubuntu 25.04 for seeing how the performance has evolved roughly over the past half-year.
Initial Linux Gaming/Graphics Performance For The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti
Earlier this week the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti launched and there were launch-day Linux CUDA/OpenCL compute benchmarks on Phoronix. But for the Linux gaming performance tests we were waiting on a new supported driver release, which happened to be on launch day with the NVIDIA 575.51.02 Linux beta. Now that the gaming-ready Linux driver is available for the GeForce RTX 5060 series, here are some initial benchmarks of the PNY GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB up against other NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards using the newly-released Ubuntu 25.04.
Intel 200S Boost Performance Mode Benchmarks On Linux
This week Intel announced “200S Boost” for Core Ultra “Arrow Lake” K-Series desktop processors as effectively a new overclocking profile rolling out to existing Z890 motherboards via a BIOS update. Enabling the 200S Boost profile is said to help with low-latency workloads like gaming by allowing higher fabric / die-to-die / memory frequencies. While some Windows benchmarks have begun emerging for the Intel 200S Boost mode and some limited gains, I was curious about the performance under Linux so here are some 200S Boost benchmarks with the Core Ultra 9 285K on Ubuntu 25.04.
And the most viewed news for the month:
Linus Torvalds Expresses His Hatred For Case-Insensitive File-Systems
Linus Torvalds is sharing some of his classic and straight-to-the-point wisdom today over file-systems with case-folding / case-insensitive file and folder support.
AMD Publishes Open-Source GIM Driver For GPU Virtualization, Radeon “In The Roadmap”
AMD has published as open-source their “GPU-IOV Module” used for virtualization with Instinct accelerators. It’s also reported on their roadmap for bringing virtualization support to their client (Radeon) discrete GPUs.
Arch Linux Is The Latest Distribution Replacing Redis With Valkey
Arch Linux is the latest Linux distribution replacing its Redis packages with the Valkey fork.
Fedora 42 Will Be Released Next Tuesday
Well here is a pleasant surprise, especially for those that recall the days long ago where Fedora Linux releases tend to be notoriously delayed… Fedora 42 is cleared for releasing next week Tuesday, 15 April, in meeting its “early target” release date.
Debian APT 3.0 Stable Released With New Package Solver & Refined Text UI
APT 3.0 has been officially released as the first stable version following an interesting development cycle. APT 3.0 has been dedicated to the late Steve Langasek with his many Debian and Ubuntu contributions over the years.
KDE Plasma 6.4 Lands Initial Support For The Wayland Session Restore Protocol
It’s been a very exciting week in the KDE Plasma space with the start of a big new feature landing for the Plasma 6.4 desktop.
Fedora 42 Released As A Fantastic Update To This Leading-Edge Linux Distribution
Fedora 42 is out today as a fabulous update to this prominent leading-edge Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat. I’ve been running Fedora 42 on several systems already — including upgrading my main production system to it — and it’s been working out very well. Fedora 42 is packed full of new features and software updates making it a great H1’2025 Linux operating system release.
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7 Desktop – Last Step Before Beta
Following the COSMIC Alpha 6 release from February, System76 today released COSMIC Alpha 7 as their last planned alpha release for this open-source, Rust-written desktop environment designed around the needs of their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.
GNOME Now Has A Second Core App Written In TypeScript
GNOME 48 made Decibels the desktop’s official audio player and in doing so also became the first GNOME core application written in the TypeScript porting language. There’s now a second core app for GNOME written in TypeScript.
KDE Preps More Wayland Improvements, Addresses Another Possible KWin Crash
KDE developers continue to be very busy working toward the Plasma 6.4 desktop release and making other enhancements throughout this open-source desktop.
Amarok 3.3 Beta Released For Qt6-Powered KDE Music Player
Last year work on KDE’s Amarok music player was resurrected after a six year development hiatus. With the return to Amarok development it was ported to Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 5. At the end of last year Amarok 3.2 released with initial Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6 support while retaining Qt5/KF5 support. Now out today is the Amarok 3.3 beta to drop that prior-generation support.
AMD Releases ROCm 6.4 Without Any Official RDNA4 Support
After several ROCm 6.3 point releases, AMD today rolled out ROCm 6.4 as the next update to their open-source GPU/accelerator compute stack and ahead of their big Advancing AI event in June where they will talk about future ROCm work.
NVIDIA Makes PhysX & Flow GPU Code Open-Source
As a win for the open-source community from NVIDIA, the company recently announced they are making their PhysX and Flow GPU-accelerated source code open-source.
Coreboot 25.03 Released With Support For 22 More Motherboards
For those looking to replace their proprietary BIOS with the open-source Coreboot on a supported platform or are already doing so, Coreboot 25.03 is out today to provide the newest capabilities for this open-source BIOS/firmware solution.
Linux Bring-Up For The Apple M4 Looks Like It Will Be “Rather Painful”
Sven Peter who remains one of the very active Asahi Linux developers and working on upstreaming various elements of Apple Silicon support for the Linux kernel has sent up warning flares around the eventual Apple M4 support.
Valve’s Proton 10.0 Beta Released With More Windows Games Now Playable On Linux
Valve and CodeWeavers today announced the much anticipated beta release of Proton 10.0 as the newest version of their downstream version of Wine that powers Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux.
Ubuntu 25.10 Moving Ahead With Plans For Migrating To Rust Coreutils
Back in March some ideas were talked about by Canonical engineers for Ubuntu Linux to move to Rust Coreutils and other Rust-written system components. Some of this is likely to materialize for the Ubuntu 25.10 release due out in October to allow for sufficient testing ahead of the all important Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release next year. Today the more solidified plans have been laid out for moving to the Rust Coreutils as a replacement to GNU Coreutils with Ubuntu 25.10.
New Linux Patches Propose Removing Support For Old i486 & Early i586 CPUs
A set of Linux kernel patches posted today by longtime Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar are looking to remove support for “ancient” 32-bit CPUs. In particular, if these patches are accepted, the Linux kernel would be ending support for old i486 CPUs as well as early i586 CPU models.
A Fresh Take On Virtual Swap Space Being Pursued For The Linux Kernel
A request for comments (RFC) patch series sent out this week for the Linux kernel is working on the notion of Virtual Swap Space support. The notion of Virtual Swap Space has been talked about for years and even going back to 2011 there’s been efforts to redesign the kernel’s swap cache along similar lines.
IBM Announces The z17 Mainframe Powered By Telum II Processors
Following IBM engineers doing a lot of open-source compiler work around a new “arch15” that we suspected to be IBM z17 with Telum II processors, this morning IBM officially announced their next-generation mainframe hardware.
