As the last planned article of the quarter, here is a look back at the most popular Phoronix content from Q1’2025 with 822 original news articles and 40 featured articles / Linux hardware reviews written by your’s truly. There were interesting hardware launches from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA this quarter along with a never-ending pace of new open-source software innovations and the unfortunate ongoing drama within the free software community.
Below is a look at the most popular original news on Phoronix for this quarter along with the most popular multi-page featured articles / Linux hardware reviews. As always if you enjoy this content put out on a daily basis single-handedly, your support is very much appreciated by joining Phoronix Premium for ad-free viewing, multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and other benefits. Tips via PayPal and Stripe help out and are much appreciated especially with regards to hardware expenditures for future articles. At the very least please disable any ad-blocker when browsing this website. The ad-blocking situation paired with YouTube / social network ads / AI bots applying a lot of unfortunate pressure on the ability to sustain operations.
On the bright side, here’s a look back at what was the ten most popular featured articles/reviews of Q1:
AMD Ryzen 9000 vs. Intel Core Ultra Arrow Lake On Linux For Q1-2025 In ~400 Benchmarks
For those wondering how the latest AMD Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” series and Intel Core Ultra Series 2 “Arrow Lake” desktop processors are battling it out on Linux, here are some fresh benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux with the latest software updates as well as the newest system BIOS updates for a fresh, all-new look at these Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen desktop CPUs on Linux.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 + RX 9070 XT Linux Performance
Last week AMD formally announced the Radeon RX 9070 series graphics cards that will begin shipping tomorrow at $549 for the Radeon RX 9070 and $599 for the RX 9070 XT. Today the review embargo is lifted so we can now share Linux performance benchmarks and more details on the open-source Linux driver support for these first AMD RDNA4 graphics cards.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Delivers Excellent Performance For Linux Developers, Creators & Technical Computing
Ahead of tomorrow’s availability of the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPUs in retail channels, today the embargo lifts on being able to deliver Ryzen 9 9950X3D reviews and performance benchmarks. Simply put, for Linux creators, developers, enthusiasts, and others running technical computing workloads and other similar tasks on their desktop, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D with its 16 cores / 32 threads and 144MB total cache makes for an excellent desktop CPU. In this review are around 400 Linux benchmarks looking at the captivating performance and competitive power efficiency of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D.
Intel Arc B570 Graphics Performance On Linux
Last month when Intel formally introduced Battlemage graphics their initial products in the B-Series were the B570 and B580 graphics cards. The B580 went on sale in December and we’ve been busy testing the B580 on Linux since while today the embargo expires on the Arc B570 with those graphics cards going on sale this morning. Here is a first look at the Intel Arc B570 graphics and compute performance under Linux with their latest open-source drivers.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Linux GPU Compute Performance Benchmarks
While there have been a lot of GeForce RTX 5090 Windows gaming benchmarks since the review embargo lift yesterday, for those more fascinated by this high-end Blackwell desktop graphics card for its GPU compute potential on Linux, this article is for you. Up today are my very initial GPU compute benchmarks for the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition on Linux with NVIDIA graphics card comparisons across the prior RTX 20, RTX, 30, and RTX 40 series too.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Through GeForce RTX 5080/5090 GPU Compute Performance
Complementing the recent Linux GPU benchmarks of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 and GeForce RTX 5090 looking at both the Linux / Steam Play gaming performance as well as GPU compute and other areas, in today’s testing is a wide multi-generation look seeing how the NVIDIA GeForce performance has evolved going back to the GeForce GTX 980 Maxwell GPUs up through the newest GeForce RTX 5080/5090 graphics cards.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 / RTX 5090 Linux Gaming Benchmarks
Over the past week I have published a number of GeForce RTX 5090 Linux compute benchmarks as well as the GeForce RTX 5080 on Linux. With that early NVIDIA R570 Linux driver build as part of the CUDA 12.8 package I was asked to wait on Linux gaming benchmarks until the proper RTX 50 Linux driver is released. Well, it was released this morning with the NVIDIA 570.86.16 Linux beta availability and have in turn been pushing the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 through a number of Linux gaming/graphics benchmarks.
Llama.cpp AI Performance With The GeForce RTX 5090
In beginning the NVIDIA Blackwell Linux testing with the GeForce RTX 5090 compute performance, besides all the CUDA/OpenCL/OptiX benchmarks delivered last week a number of readers asked about AI performance and in particular the Llama.cpp performance with the RTX 5090 flagship graphics card. Here are some initial benchmarks looking at the GeForce RTX 5090 performance in Llama.cpp compared to prior RTX 40 and RTX 30 graphics cards.
SiFive HiFive Premier P550 RISC-V Linux Performance
SiFive recently sent over a review sample of the much anticipated HiFive Premier P550 developer board, their newest RISC-V creation featuring four RISC-V cores, Imagination AXM-8-256 integrated GPU, Gigabit Ethernet, PCIe x16 slot, and 16GB or 32GB of RAM. The HiFive Premier P550 is a modern RISC-V developer board capable of desktop uses, developer build boxes, and similar with pricing starting out at $399 USD. Here is a look at the SiFive HiFive Premier P550 as well as comparison benchmarks of this RISC-V board to the popular Raspberry Pi single board computers.
The Compelling AVX-512 Performance Advantage On AMD EPYC 9005 “Turin”
Back in October following the launch of the EPYC 9005 “Turin” processors I ran an AVX-512 performance comparison for the EPYC 9755 with 512-bit data path vs. 256-bit data path vs. AVX-512 disabled. That was interesting for showing the benefits of Zen 5’s full 512-bit data path support compared to the “double pumped” approach with Zen 4 or optionally used via a BIOS option on Zen 5. AVX-512 continues to prove to be very performant and power efficient with AMD Zen 5 processors unlike with the early generations of AVX-512 on Intel processors. Here is a fresh look at the AVX-512 performance on a Supermicro server with an AMD EPYC 9655 processor.
And then the most popular news of Q1:
Linux’s Sole Wireless/WiFi Driver Maintainer Is Stepping Down
Days after a DRM driver developer orphaned his drivers due to health reasons in stepping down, the sole maintainer at large of the Linux wireless (WiFi) drivers is stepping down and without any immediate replacement.
Asahi Lina Pausing Work On Apple GPU Linux Driver Development
Following Hector Martin stepping down from the Asahi Linux project that he founded for bringing Linux to Apple Silicon hardware, Asahi Lina announced today that she is pausing work on all of the Apple GPU driver development she had been pursuing for Asahi Linux with the open-source DRM kernel driver as well as Mesa contributions.
Greg Kroah-Hartman Makes A Compelling Case For New Linux Kernel Drivers To Be Written In Rust
The debate over the Linux kernel’s Rust programming language policy continues… While some kernel maintainers are against it, Linus Torvalds has reportedly said he would override maintainers that may be against honoring Rust code. Linux’s second-in-command Greg Kroah-Hartman has also been a big proponent of Rust kernel code. He’s crafted another Linux kernel mailing list post today outlining the benefits of Rust and encouraging new kernel code/drivers to be in Rust rather than C.
Karol Herbst Steps Down As Nouveau Maintainer Due To Linux Kernel’s Toxic Environment
Karol Herbst has been a Nouveau driver developer for over a decade working on this open-source, reverse-engineered NVIDIA Linux graphics driver. He went on to become employed by Red Hat. While he’s known more these days for his work on Mesa and the Rusticl OpenCL driver for it, he’s still remained a maintainer of the Nouveau kernel driver. But today he announced he’s resigning as a Nouveau driver maintainer due to differences with the upstream Linux kernel developer community.
KDE Plasma 6.3 Beta Released With A Ton Of Improvements
Ahead of the planned stable release next month, the beta version of Plasma 6.3 is out today for testing this next iteration of the KDE desktop.
Rust-Written Zlib-rs Is Not Only Safer But Now Outperforming Zlib C Implementations
Zlib-rs as a Rust programming language implementation of the Zlib file format for better safety is now beginning to outperform the C implementations of the widely-used Zlib.
Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Steps Down As Upstream Apple Silicon Maintainer
Following arguments on the Linux kernel mailing list the past few days over some Linux kernel maintainers being against the notion of Rust code in the mainline Linux kernel and trying to avoid it and very passionate views over the Linux kernel development process, Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin has removed himself from being an upstream maintainer of the ARM Apple code.
FLAC 1.5 Finally Delivers Multi-Threaded Encoding
FLAC 1.5 is out today as the newest feature update to the software built around the Free Lossless Audio Codec.
KDE Internet of Things “Kiot” Started To Provide Nice Home Assistant Integration
Longtime KDE developer David Edmundson has recently been cleaning up some scripts he’s been using personally for a few years to enhance the integration between the KDE desktop and Home Assistant for open-source home automation. This work has evolved into the KDE Internet of Things “Kiot” and is currently in a pre-alpha state for enhancing the support between KDE and home automation controls.
Christoph Hellwig Steps Down From One Of His Kernel Roles Following Rust Drama
Following the recent Rust drama within the Linux kernel that came out in part because Christoph Hellwig expressed objections to Rust bindings for the DMA mapping helpers that he is a maintainer of, Hellwig has now stepped down as one of the DMA mapping helper maintainers.
Microsoft Announces Open-Source “Hyperlight Wasm” Project
Microsoft last year announced the open-source Hyperlight project as an embedded VMM for use as a micro-VM manager of sorts that can be run within Windows and Linux applications. This VM-based security for small embedded functions now has its scope expanded with the open-source release today of Hyperlight Wasm for bringing in WebAssembly to the party.
Linux Finally Introducing A Standardized Way Of Informing User-Space Over Hung GPUs
The upcoming Linux 6.15 kernel is set to finally introduce a standardized way of informing user-space of GPUs becoming hung or otherwise unresponsive. This is initially wired up for AMD and Intel graphics drivers on Linux so the user can be properly notified of problems and/or user-space software taking steps to address the hung/unresponsive graphics processor.
Raspberry Pi RP2350 Now Available For Purchase, Stacked Memory Variant Coming Soon
Raspberry Pi last year announced the RP2350 second-generation micro-controller that debuted within their $5 Raspberry Pi Pico 2 single board computer. Today they announced the RP2350 micro-controller is now available to purchase for your own micro-controller needs.
Wine Releases Framework Mono 6.14 In Taking Over The Mono Project
Last year Microsoft donated the Mono Project to Wine for its stewardship under the WineHQ umbrella. Today marks the Framework Mono 6.14 release as the first major Mono release in five years and the first under the WineHQ organization.
AMD Announces “Instella” Fully Open-Source 3B Language Models
Another announcement at AMD today beyond the open-source Linux driver fun for the Radeon RX 9070 series is announcing the open-sourcing of Instella as their new fully open 3B parameter language models.
Linus Torvalds Clearly Lays Out Linux Maintainer Roles – Or Not – Around Rust Code
The Linux kernel mailing list drama around the Rust programming language use within the kernel continues… Linus Torvalds has largely refrained from the ongoing LKML discussions around a Rust policy for the Linux kernel and in-fighting between kernel developers and maintainers with differing views over Rust. This evening though Linus Torvalds did decide to chime in on the conversation.
Torvalds Frustrated Over “Disgusting” Testing “Turd” DRM Code Landing In Linux 6.15
The big set of open-source graphics driver updates for Linux 6.15 have been merged but Linux creator Linus Torvalds isn’t particularly happy with the pull request. In particular, he’s unhappy with some new “hdrtest” testing code being built as part of full kernel builds and the “turds” it leaves behind and this code “needs to die” at least from the perspective of non-DRM driver developers.
KDE Starts 2025 With Accessibility Improvements & Better Graphics Tablet Controls
After a short break over the holidays, KDE developer Nate Graham is back with his “This Week in Plasma” series to highlight the interesting KDE Plasma desktop changes made each week.
KDE Plasma 6.3: “It’s Looking Pretty Good!”
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his traditional weekly recap of all the interesting KDE Plasma changes for the past week. With less than two weeks until the Plasma 6.3 stable release, Nate Graham began his weekly update by remarking that the Plasma 6.3 desktop is “looking pretty good!”
Linus Torvalds Would Reportedly Merge Rust Kernel Code Over Maintainer Objections
The drama surrounding Rust code within the Linux kernel continues… Christoph Hellwig is the maintainer of the DMA mapping helpers and several other areas of the kernel has been an outspoken critic of Rust code or secondary programming languages within the Linux kernel kernel. Hellwig has been critical of Rust code for the Linux kernel and its long-term maintainability. Today he’s out with another mailing list post where he notes that Linus Torvalds mentioned in private he would override maintainer vetoes on Rust code within the kernel.
Here’s to an exciting Q2 ahead with your support.
