Over the course of August on Phoronix were 267 original news articles and 17 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles. Coming somewhat as a surprise, AMD Linux testing articles and hardware reviews managed to capture all top 10 spots for the most viewed content… Something no single vendor has pulled off in the past 21 years of Phoronix. But with the launch of the Framework Desktop, AMD Krackan Point Linux testing for sub-$500 laptops, Threadripper 9000 series, and other hardware excitement, that feat happened in August.
Below is a look at the most popular featured articles/reviews on Phoronix for August 2025 along with the most viewed news stories for the month. On the open-source/Linux news side there was a lot of excitement around the Linux 6.17 kernel development, the Debian 13.0 release, Bcachefs drama, KDE Plasma 6.5 feature work, the FFmpeg 8.0 multimedia library, and much more.
If you enjoy the original content on Phoronix each and every day of the year and still going at it after 21 years, please consider showing your support by joining Phoronix Premium to enjoy the site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode support, and other benefits. Or at the very lease please disable any ad-blocker when viewing this site. Tips via PayPal and Stripe are much appreciated as well. Due to the state of the online ad industry and all the ongoing difficulties facing web publishes, operations remain very difficult to say the least. Thanks for your support.
The most popular featured articles/reviews for August included:
AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 vs. Ryzen 9 9950X vs. Ryzen 9 9950X3D Linux Performance
In today’s launch-day review of the Framework Desktop with AMD Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” were a number of benchmarks comparing the mini/SFF PC to Framework Laptops, the Strix Halo powered HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptops, and similar devices. With this being a desktop after all, for those wondering how the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 compares in a desktop form factor to the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X series processors, this article has all those benchmark numbers.
AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 With Framework Desktop vs. Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Linux Performance
Last week alongside our Framework Desktop review with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 “Strix Halo” SoC I posted benchmarks of the Strix Halo performance compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X / 9950X3D socketed desktop processors. For those wondering similarly how the top-end Strix Halo SoC in the Framework Desktop competes with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K “Arrow Lake” flagship in performance and power efficiency, here are those comparison benchmarks.
Framework Desktop With AMD Ryzen AI Max Offers Excellent, Linux-Friendly Performance
Today the review embargo lifts on the much anticipated Framework Desktop computer powered by AMD Ryzen AI Max 300 Series “Strix Halo” SoCs. Aside from offering an enclosure to allow old Framework motherboards to be re-tasked as a makeshift desktop computer, the Framework Desktop is the company’s first dedicated desktop computer offering and it’s very impressive in building around the Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” platform. Here is a look at the Framework Desktop with initial testing under Linux and a wide assortment of benchmarks.
AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 “Krackan Point” Offers Outstanding Value In Sub-$500 Laptops
Over the past three months we have been excitedly testing AMD’s Strix Halo SoC with the Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 flagship model as well as the Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 as one step below. Strix Halo offers excellent CPU and GPU performance capabilities at the top-end if your budget allows. But at the opposite end and a step below the Strix Point SoCs that have been available the past year is Krackan Point. Krackan Point is for the mid-range offerings in the Ryzen AI 300 series. Recently I’ve been testing an AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 laptop that offers pretty impressive performance/value when considering it can be found brand new for as little as $449 USD with the HP OmniBook 5.
AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance For Budget “Krackan Point” Laptops
Earlier this month we looked at the Linux laptop performance of AMD’s Krackan Point using the Ryzen AI 5 340 within a HP OmniBook 5 that can be found for as low as ~$450 during sales. For six Zen 5 cores and RDNA 3.5 graphics, Krackan Point worked well as a budget Linux laptop option. For those wondering how the Linux vs. Windows 11 performance compares for the budget HP OmniBook, here are some benchmarks.
Rusticl vs. AMD ROCm Performance On Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo”
One of the set of tests I have been meaning to carry out for a number of months has been comparing the Mesa Rusticl performance to different dedicated hardware drivers. Rusticl is the Rust-based OpenCL 3.0 driver within Mesa that works across Gallium3D drivers and over the past many months has been maturing rather well. Among the targets I have been wanting to compare is how well Rusticl competes with the AMD ROCm OpenCL implementation for Radeon GPUs. Given all the interest recently around Strix Halo and the Framework Desktop as well, today’s benchmarking is looking at the performance between these different OpenCL driver implementations for the Radeon 8060S Graphics.
Linux 5.15 LTS To 6.17 Benchmarks: Four Years Of Kernel Improvement Net 37% Improvement On AMD EPYC
Stemming from a request by a Phoronix Premium reader wondering about some fresh historical kernel performance comparison numbers, today’s benchmarking is looking at the performance of the LTS and latest stable Linux kernel versions going back to Linux 5.15 LTS in 2021. For testing an AMD EPYC Milan-X server was used for compatibility back through Linux 5.15 LTS with some rather impressive results for testing these major Linux kernel releases of the past four years.
DDR5-6400 vs. DDR5-4800 R-DIMM Performance For Threadripper 9980X / 9970X CPUs
Last week the Threadripper 9000 series began shipping and as shown in our launch-day Linux testing there was stunning performance with the 32-core Threadripper 9970X and 64-core Threadripper 9980X processors. Beyond the improvements thanks to the Zen 5 microarchitecture enhancements, the new Threadrippers while working as a drop-in replacement to existing TRX50 workstation motherboards now can handle DDR5-6400 R-DIMMs up from DDR5-4800 R-DIMMs with the Threadripper 7000 series. For those wondering about the gain attributed to the faster memory modules, here are benchmarks looking at the DDR5-4800 vs. DDR5-6400 real-world performance impact for AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9970X and 9980X CPUs.
Debian 13 Showing 13% Performance Improvement Over Debian 12 On AMD EPYC
If all goes according to plan Debian 13.0 will be released this weekend. Already in its effectively final state aside from any last minute fixes, I’ve begun running Debian 13 testing builds on various systems in the lab to great success. With two years since Debian 12, the new software packages of Debian 13 help in delivering better performance especially on modern systems. Here is a look at Debian 12 versus Debian 13 performance on an AMD EPYC server across 130 benchmarks. Coincidentally, Debian 13 is coming in at 13% faster than Debian 12.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX Performance With TRX50 + Quad Channel DDR5
The newly-launched AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series headlined by the 64-core Threadripper 9980X and 32-core Threadripper 9970X offer incredible performance and a wonderful addition to the Zen 5 family for the HEDT space. But there is also the Threadripper PRO 9000 series with the flagship Threadripper PRO 9995WX sporting 96 cores. In this article is a look at how that 96-core AMD Threadripper PRO 9995WX performs using a TRX50 platform with quad channel DDR5-6400 memory.
And then the most popular news for the past month:
Linus Torvalds Rejects RISC-V Changes For Linux 6.17: “Garbage”
Linus Torvalds has used his authority to reject the RISC-V architecture changes for the Linux 6.17 kernel. The RISC-V updates won’t land this cycle and will need to try again for v6.18 later in the year. Linus refers to at least some of the proposed RISC-V code as garbage along with being submitted rather late during the merge window.
Btrfs Has Saved Meta “Billions Of Dollars” In Infrastructure Costs
Amid the ongoing discussion over what will happen too Bcachefs in the mainline Linux kernel, an interesting anecdote around Btrfs was mentioned.
Additional Intel Linux Drivers Left Orphaned & Maintainers Let Go
Well, it’s an unpleasant afternoon in Linux land with more signs of the ongoing impact from Intel’s corporate-wide restructuring. Just after writing about Intel’s CPU temperature monitoring driver now left unmaintained/orphaned, more patches hit the public Linux kernel mailing list to mark additional Intel drivers as orphaned and removing maintainer entries for Linux developers no longer at Intel.
Linus Torvalds Marks Bcachefs As Now “Externally Maintained”
Linus Torvalds has finally come to a decision following his plans to part ways with the Bcachefs file-system and then not merging any Bcachefs updates for Linux 6.17.
Linux Address Space Isolation “ASI” Revived After Lowering 70% Performance Hit To 13%
Several years ago Google engineers began exploring address space isolation for the Linux kernel and ultimately proposing Linux ASI for better dealing with CPU speculative execution attacks. While the hope was it would better cope with the ever growing list of CPU speculative execution vulnerabilities, the effort was thwarted initially by I/O throughput seeing a 70% performance hit. That level of performance cost was unsustainable. But now that I/O overhead has been reduced to just 13%.
Intel CPU Temperature Monitoring Driver For Linux Now Unmaintained After Layoffs
There is yet more apparent fallout from Intel’s recent layoffs/restructurings as it impacts the Linux kernel… The coretemp driver that provides CPU core temperature monitoring support for all Intel processors going back many years is now set to an orphaned state with the former driver maintainer no longer at Intel and no one immediately available to serve as its new maintainer.
FFmpeg 8.0 Merges OpenAI Whisper Filter For Automatic Speech Recognition
The upcoming FFmpeg 8.0 multimedia library release continues to get more exciting almost by the day. The newest feature being squeezed into this next release is a Whisper audio filter for making use of OpenAI’s Whisper model for providing automatic speech recognition / transcription capabilities.
systemd 259 To Raise Linux System Requirements
Systemd 258 is nearing release with many big changes to this init system / service manager. Systemd 258-rc3 was released today with some last minute fixes while also now adding that the next release, systemd 259, will face increased Linux system requirements.
Linux Primed For Significant Performance Gains With Kernel Swap Code Overhaul
A patch series posted overnight that is part of a larger planned rework for the kernel to introduce a “Swap Table” is poised to bring significant real-world performance gains to the Linux kernel.
Btrfs Developer Josef Bacik Leaving Meta & Stepping Back From Kernel Development
Josef Bacik who is a long-time Btrfs developer and active co-maintainer alongside David Sterba is leaving Meta. Additionally, he’s also stepping back from Linux kernel development as his primary job.
EXT4 Shows Wild Gains With Better Block Allocation Scalability In Linux 6.17
The EXT4 file-system enhancements for Linux 6.17 were merged on Thursday and bring better scalability to the block allocation code as well as fixing the file-system’s large folios support. The scalability work can show some wild gains in select areas.
GNOME AI Virtual Assistant “Newelle” Reaches Version 1.0 Milestone
Newelle is a virtual AI assistant developed for the GNOME desktop that supports voice chat and can handle carrying out web searches, terminal command execution, website reading, file management, document editing, and more. Newell v1.0 was released this week for advancing this GNOME AI virtual assistant.
Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 Released With Completed 64-bit Support, Rust Ported
Following this weekend’s release of Debian 13.0 “Trixie”, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 has been released as the state of Trixie while running atop Hurd rather than Linux.
With Apple M1/M2 Graphics Driver Code Working, Alyssa Rosenzweig Stepping Away From Asahi Linux
As another very unfortunate setback for the Asahi Linux project moving forward after Hector Martin left the project as did Asahi Lina pausing work on open-source Apple driver development, Alyssa Rosenzweig announced today that she is stepping away from the project following the successes in bringing up Apple M1 and M2 graphics drivers for Linux.
FFmpeg 8.0 Released With OpenAI Whisper Filter, Many Vulkan Video Improvements
FFmpeg 8.0 is now available! FFmpeg 8.0 is a magnificent update to this widely-used open-source multimedia library and with this new version is the introduction of an OpenAI Whisper filter for automatic speech recognition, many Vulkan Video improvements for greater GPU-accelerated video handling, and a number of CPU performance optimizations.
KDE Plasma 6.5 Introducing “KISS” – An Initial System Setup Wizard
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his customary weekend blog post to summarize all the interesting Plasma desktop developments for the week. Most exciting in recent days is Plasma 6.5 receiving an initial system setup wizard.
Linux 6.17 Getting More Rusty With Many Rust Language Additions
As has been the trend with recent Linux kernel releases, a lot of Rust programming language abstractions and other additions are coming for the in-development Linux 6.17 kernel.
FFmpeg 8.0 Merges Vulkan AV1 Encoding & VP9 Decoding
Ahead of the upcoming FFmpeg 8.0 release for this widely-used, open-source multimedia library some more last minute features continue to land. Hitting FFmpeg Git today are some Vulkan Video additions.
Linux 6.17-rc1 Released With Many New Features But No Bcachefs Changes
Linus Torvalds just released the Linux 6.17-rc1 kernel a few hours ahead of his typical release regiment due to currently being in Europe. That marks the end of the Linux 6.17 merge window with many exciting changes merged this cycle. This is notable with Linux 6.17 expected to power Ubuntu 25.10 and other late 2025 Linux distribution releases.
Debian 13.0 “Trixie” Now Available – Powered By Linux 6.12 LTS
Debian 13.0 “Trixie” is now officially out as the newest two-year stable release to Debian GNU/Linux.
