With Q2 quickly drawing to a close, here is a look back at the most popular Linux hardware reviews and other Linux/open-source news for the quarter.
Below is a look at the most popular Linux hardware reviews / featured benchmark articles and news for 2025’Q2 on Phoronix to relive the best moments for the past three months. As always, if you appreciate the daily flow of original Linux-focused content found on Phoronix over the past 21 years, you can show your support by joining Phoronix Premium to enjoy ad-free browsing, multi-page articles on a single page, and other benefits all while helping to support the site during these difficult times for the web publishing industry.
The most popular reviews that resonated with readers during Q2 included:
Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Benchmarks On Ubuntu Linux vs. AMD vs. Intel
June 2024 marked the launch of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite to much initial fanfare for finally some compelling ARM laptop designs. While initially — and still to this day with the likes of the TUXEDO X Elite laptop not materializing yet — being focused on Windows 11 on ARM, there was hope among Linux users this would lead to a nice ARM Linux laptop experience, since after all Qualcomm and Linaro were working on enhancing the support for Linux. Now approaching the one year point, the overall state of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite support and performance is rather disappointing. Here’s a look at where things currently are and performance relative to AMD Ryzen and Intel Core Ultra when making use of the latest Ubuntu Linux support.
Bcachefs, Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS & XFS File-System Performance On Linux 6.15
With the copy-on-write Bcachefs file-system considering its on-disk format now “soft frozen” and nearing the point of potentially removing the “EXPERIMENTAL” flag on it, a number of Phoronix readers have been requesting some fresh benchmarks of this open-source file-system. For your viewing pleasure today are some fresh benchmarks of Bcachefs and other file-systems atop the Linux 6.15 kernel being released as stable later this month. On the benchmarking block today are Bcachefs, Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, and XFS in-tree file-systems.
AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 Linux Benchmarks: Outright Incredible Performance
We finally have AMD’s Strix Halo in the lab for benchmarking! HP has kindly sent over their ZBook Ultra 14-inch G1a mobile workstation: it’s a beast being powered by the top-end AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 SoC with 16 cores / 32 threads and powerful integrated Radeon 8060S graphics, 128GB of system memory, a nice 14-inch 2.8K display, and other top-end features to provide a dominating laptop powerhouse. In today’s article are the very initial benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 Strix Halo SoC under Linux with a focus on the CPU capabilities: a separate article also out today is looking at the AMD Radeon 8060S graphics on Linux.
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.
AMD Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo” Delivers Best Performance On Linux Over Windows 11 – Even With Gaming
Now having shown the very strong AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 Linux performance for this “Strix Halo” SoC with Radeon 8060S iGPU for its integrated graphics, you may be wondering on the same hardware how this compares to Microsoft Windows 11. Today’s article is looking at the Microsoft Windows 11 Pro performance as shipped by HP on their ZBook Ultra 14 G1a laptop compared to Ubuntu 25.04 with a clean install.
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.
Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance On The AMD Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 “Strix Halo”
While the results shouldn’t be too surprising given the recent AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Windows 11 vs. Linux testing, when the HP ZBook Ultra G1a powered by the step-down AMD Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 arrived with Microsoft Windows 11 Pro, I also took the opportunity to run some Windows vs. Linux performance benchmarks on that AMD Strix Halo SoC.
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.
AMD EPYC 4565P & EPYC 4585PX Benchmarks Against Xeon 6369P: EPYC 4005 Champions Entry-Level Server Performance
With today’s announcement of the AMD EPYC 4005P “Grado” entry-level server processors, up for review today are the EPYC 4565P and EPYC 4585PX processors as the top-end Zen 5 processors for budget server builds and basic bare metal server hosting. With the prior-generation EPYC 4004 series AMD was already leading over Intel’s entry-level Xeon E processors that have become rather embarrassing for the company with its stagnate line-up of low-cost server processors. Now with the AMD EPYC 4005 series, AMD is in an even stronger position and providing a total knock-out to the new Xeon 6300P competition headlined by the Xeon 6369P flagship model.
21-Way Intel Core / AMD Ryzen Linux Laptop Comparison On Ubuntu 25.04
As part of fresh re-testing of existing laptops on-hand given the recent release of Ubuntu 25.04 and then also recent Linux reviews of some interesting models like the Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Strix Point and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition, I have been running a lot of Linux laptop benchmarks the past few weeks. I ended up taking things a bit further after those reviews and have now extended it to a 21-way laptop comparison of AMD Ryzen and Intel Core SoCs from the past few generations in looking at their performance on Ubuntu 25.04 across more than 200 benchmarks.
And the most popular news of the quarter:
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.
Disabling Intel Graphics Security Mitigations Can Boost GPU Compute Performance By 20%
While not talked about as much as the Intel CPU security mitigations, Intel graphics security mitigations have added up over time that if disabling Intel graphics security mitigations for their GPU compute stack for OpenCL and Level Zero can yield a 20% performance boost. Ubuntu maker Canonical in cooperation with Intel is preparing to disable these security mitigations in the Ubuntu packages in order to recoup this lost performance.
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.
The Latest X.Org Server Activity Are A Lot Of Code Reverts
The X.Org Server has been seeing a lot of commits this week… to revert bad code.
KDE Plasma 6.4 Tackles An 18 Year Old Feature Request, More Wayland Protocols Added
The KDE Plasma developer sprint in Graz wrapped up just days ago but there’s still been no shortage of new feature work landing into Plasma 6.4 this week. It was another exciting week of feature development as the soft feature freeze approaches for Plasma 6.4.
Rust Coreutils 0.1 Released With Big Performance Gains – Can Match Or Exceed GNU Speed
With Ubuntu 25.10 planning to ship the Rust-based Coreutils “uutils” by default, it’s a big year ahead for this alternative to GNU Coreutils. In furthering along the project’s goals, today marks the Rust Coreutils v0.1 release.
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.
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.
Linux Swap Table Code Shows The Potential For Huge Performance Gains
Following recent discussions by Linux kernel developers around integrating swap cache and swap maps functionality with the swap allocator, Swap Table was born. With Swap Tables the hope is for lower memory use, higher performance, dynamic swap allocation and growth, greater extensibility, and other improvements over the existing swap code within the Linux kernel.
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.
Bytedance Proposes Faster Linux Inter-Process Communication With “Run Process As Library”
Bytedance engineers are exploring faster inter-process communication (IPC) on Linux via a new approach they call Run Process As Library (RPAL). Their initial benchmarks of RPAL are very promising for faster Linux IPC performance.
KDE Developers Prepare More Wayland Improvements For Plasma 6.4
As we near the end of April, KDE developers remain quite busy working on more enhancements for the Plasma 6.4 desktop while many of them were also meeting this week in Graz, Austria for further development and planning.
Plasma LTS Releases Being Discontinued, Better KDE Telemetry Like Valve’s Steam Survey
KDE Plasma open-source developers were meeting the past week in Graz, Austria to plot out fundamental changes and improvements moving forward for this great desktop. Among the changes decided on were ending their practice of Plasma LTS releases, enhancing the telemetry capabilities to be more useful, and more.
Radeon Software For Linux Dropping AMD’s Proprietary OpenGL/Vulkan Drivers
With how well the open-source and upstream AMD Radeon Linux graphics driver stack is these days between the mainline Linux kernel and Mesa, the Radeon Software for Linux packaged driver releases are not usually notable these days on Phoronix… The packaged Radeon Software for Linux drivers haven’t been popular with gamers/enthusiasts in years given how good the upstream support is and those packaged bits mostly useful for those just running enterprise Linux distributions with older versions of Linux and Mesa. But the next Radeon Software for Linux packaged driver release is set to introduce a big change.
KDE Plasma Lands More Crash Fixes This Week, Refines Its Crash Reporting Wizard
It’s been a busy start to April for KDE Plasma developers as they continue working toward the Plasma 6.4 feature release. There have been yet more crash fixes along with other polishing and stability enhancements to kick off the new month.
KDE Plasma 6.3.4 Now Shipping With The Latest Crash Fixes
KDE Plasma 6.3.4 shipped this morning as the newest monthly point release for the Plasma 6.3 desktop.
KDE Plasma 6.4 Beta Released With Aurorae & KWin-X11
The beta release of the KDE Plasma 6.4 beta desktop is now available for testing ahead of its official release in June.
KDE Gear 25.04 Delivers Many Improvements To KDE’s Applications
Following the recent Plasma 6.3 desktop release, KDE Gear 25.04 is now available for shipping all of the latest and greatest KDE applications.
Canonical Confirms Ubuntu 25.10 Will Drop Support For GNOME On X.Org
In aligning with upstream GNOME 49 expected to ship with X11 support disabled by default, Canonical announced today that the upcoming Ubuntu 25.10 release will also ship without support for running the GNOME desktop on X11.
Linus Torvalds Rejects The Idea Of Enabling DAMON By Default In The Linux Kernel
DAMON is a nifty data access monitoring solution for the Linux kernel developed by Amazon and other parties for system monitoring and performance/efficiency optimizations and more. But it’s not so ground-breaking that it’s worth enabling by default in all Linux kernel builds, Linus Torvalds has decided.
