During last month on Phoronix were 276 original news articles and another 15 featured reviews/benchmark articles around our forte of Linux hardware. Even with the summer here there has been no slowdown in interesting hardware running on Linux and the pace of innovation happening around open-source software.
For those that didn’t have a chance to keep up with all the new content on Phoronix each and every day, here is a look back at the most popular Linux hardware reviews and other Linux/open-source news for the past month on Phoronix. As the monthly reminder, if you enjoy all this unique content on Phoronix, please consider showing your support by at a minimum not engaging any ad-blocker on this site. If you prefer not to see any ads, joining Phoronix Premium allows ad-free access to the site, native dark mode, multi-page articles rendered on a single page, and other benefits while continuing to support the site. With not running sponsored articles or major OEMs specifically focusing on the Linux desktop area for advertising, operations continue to be difficult in the 21st year of Phoronix on top of the typical struggles in the web publishing/advertising space. Your support is greatly appreciated. Tips via Stripe or PayPal are always accepted as well.
The most popular reviews for July 2025 on Phoronix included:
Firefox 120 To Firefox 141 Web Browser Benchmarks
For those curious about the direction of Mozilla Firefox web browser performance over the past year and a half, here are web browser benchmarks for every Firefox release from Firefox 120 in November 2023 through the newest Firefox 140 stable and Firefox 140 beta releases from a few days ago. Every major Firefox release was benchmarked on the same Ubuntu Linux system with AMD Ryzen 9 9950X for evaluating the performance and memory usage of this open-source web browser.
8-Way Linux OS Comparison On The Framework 12: Squeezing More Performance Out Of Raptor Lake
Earlier this year when the Framework 13 was updated for the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series I ran benchmarks looking at the performance gains across different Linux distributions with Debian 13, Clear Linux, and CachyOS being the outstanding performers for that Strix Point hardware. With the recent launch of the Framework 12 2-in-1 laptop powered by Intel Raptor Lake you may be wondering what Linux distributions have the edge there. Here is an eight-way comparison of different Linux operating systems on the Framework 12 with Intel Core i5 1334U with the likes of Arch Linux, CachyOS, Clear Linux, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, and Ubuntu.
Final Benchmarks Of Clear Linux On Intel: ~48% Faster Than Ubuntu Out-Of-The-Box
Last week Friday the unfortunate news came down that Intel was discontinuing their Clear Linux project effective immediately. For the past ten years Intel software engineers have been crafting Clear Linux as a high performance distribution that is extensively optimized for x86_64 processors via aggressive compiler tuning, various patches to the Linux kernel and other packages, and a variety of other optimizations throughout the operating system. For years Clear Linux has led Linux x86_64 performance not only on Intel desktop/mobile/server hardware but on AMD systems too. Here is a final look at the Clear Linux performance on the Intel side compared to the performance of the latest Ubuntu 25.04 release.
Mesa 25.2 NVK vs. NVIDIA R575 Linux Graphics Performance For GeForce RTX 40 Series
A number of Phoronix readers have been interested in seeing some fresh benchmarks of Mesa’s NVK Vulkan driver in providing open-source Vulkan API support on NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards as well as the modern OpenGL approach of using Zink for layering OpenGL atop Vulkan. Here are some fresh benchmarks using the very latest Mesa 25.2 code for NVK on the latest upstream stable Linux kernel compared to the NVIDIA R575 official Linux graphics driver stack.
Performance & Power Of The Low-Cost EPYC 4005 “Grado” vs. Original EPYC 7601 Zen 1 Flagship CPU
For those on very long server upgrade cycles, typically just running the hardware until failure or consider buying second-hand servers that are generations old for lower up-front cost, today’s unique article is for you with quantifying a first-generation EPYC server compared to today’s entry-level EPYC processors in performance and power efficiency. With the fascinating AMD EPYC 4005 “Grado” budget-friendly server processors I was curious how well they would stack up against AMD’s original flagship EPYC processor, the AMD EPYC 7601 “Naples” processor from the Zen 1 era. Can an entry-level brand new Grado server processor with dual channel DDR5 memory outpace an original EPYC server with twice the core/thread counts and eight channel DDR4 server memory? Yes, with huge gains in performance and power efficiency.
AMD Threadripper 9980X + 9970X Linux Benchmarks: Incredible Workstation Performance
Ahead of the Threadripper 9000 series hitting store shelves tomorrow, today the review embargo lifts on these new high-end desktop/workstation Zen 5 processors. I have been testing out the Threadripper 9970X and 9980X this month and have been extremely excited about the generational uplift and all-around performance of these new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9970X/9980X processors on Linux for delivering the best possible workstation performance in 2025.
AMD Strix Point Linux Performance Comparison One Year After Launch
How time flies… This week already marks one year since the debut of AMD’s Zen 5 Strix Point laptop processors with the likes of the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Ryzen AI 9 365 that also rolled out the RDNA 3.5 integrated graphics. In marking one year that Strix Point laptops have been available, here is a performance benchmarking redux of the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with the ASUS Zenbook S16 for looking at how the Linux performance at launch-day compares to a very leading-edge Linux software stack now one year later.
AMD’s Epic Performance Gains From The Original EPYC 7601 To EPYC 9755 / EPYC 9965
Last week I published fresh benchmarks showing how AMD’s EPYC 4005 series for budget servers can outperform the original EPYC 7601 flagship processor when EPYC first launched during the Zen 1 period. Even with lower core counts and fewer memory channels, the modern EPYC 4005 “Grado” processors were able to outpace that original EPYC “Naples” flagship processor from 2017. With carrying out the fresh re-testing of the AMD EPYC 7601 on a modern 2025 Linux software stack, in today’s article is a look at how the EPYC 7601 Zen 1 performance compares to the EPYC 9005 “Turin” series with today’s flagship EPYC 9755 and EPYC 9965 processors.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 Ray-Tracing Performance Improving With Mesa 25.2
With the feature freeze and code branching for Mesa 25.2 expected to take place next week and kick off the release process for this quarterly Mesa 3D version to debut as stable in August, I’ve begun running more benchmarks of this latest code on popular GPUs. As it pertains to the newest AMD Radeon RX 9000 series RDNA4 graphics processors, the most exciting area with Mesa 25.2 are the Vulkan ray-tracing improvements. Here is a look at some of what to expect with the upcoming Mesa 25.2 performance for the AMD Radeon RX 9070 graphics card on Linux.
Linux 6.16’s New “X86_NATIVE_CPU” Option Enhances I/O & Some Graphics/Gaming Workloads
With the newly-released Linux 6.16 kernel there is the new X86_NATIVE_CPU build option if wanting to optimize your kernel build for your local CPU in use. Enabling CONFIG_X86_NATIVE_CPU is setting the “-march=native” compiler optimizations for the kernel build in an effort to ensure peak performance/optimizations for the local system. Here are some benchmarks looking at the impact of X86_NATIVE_CPU on Linux 6.16 while using the HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop with AMD Strix Halo SoC as an interesting test target for squeezing additional performance.
And the most popular news:
Intel Announces It’s Shutting Down Clear Linux
The most depressing news of the week: Intel is ending their performance-optimized Clear Linux distribution. Over the past decade the Clear Linux operating system has shown what’s possible with out-of-the-box performance on x86_64 hardware… Not just for Intel platforms but even showing extremely great performance results on AMD x86_64 too. But with the cost-cutting going on at Intel, Clear Linux is now being sunset.
Another Longtime Intel Linux Engineer Leaves The Company
Amid Intel’s ongoing financial difficulties and multiple rounds of layoffs some Linux engineers at Intel left last year and there’s been at least one prominent departure this week amid the latest round of challenges at the company.
Latest Intel Engineering Layoffs Lead To An Intel Linux Driver Being Orphaned
The latest round of cost-cutting at Intel seems to be having a larger impact on their software engineering efforts than some of their previous rounds of layoffs. In addition to a prominent Linux kernel developer veteran leaving Intel last week where he worked for the past 14 years and responsible for many great upstream improvements, other Intel software engineers working on their Linux/open-source affairs have also been departing. In just the latest instance, one of the upstream Intel Linux kernel drivers is now “orphaned” due to the developer departing and no one experienced left to maintain the code.
Debian 13.0 “Trixie” Planning For Release On August 9
The Debian release team today shared their final release plans for Debian 13 “Trixie” that aims to be out as stable in less than one month’s time.
Wayback Is Now Hosted On FreeDesktop.org
Wayback began recently as an experimental X11 compatibility layer for non-Wayland desktop environments to leverage Wayland components. While still in early form, the project has already taken off from being a personal GitHub project to now being hosted on FreeDesktop.org alongside other projects such as Wayland and the X.Org Server itself plus other prominent software like Mesa and GStreamer and much more.
Canonical Decides To Double Down On Their Investment In Java For Ubuntu
Ubuntu maker Canonical has decided to “double down” their investment in OpenJDK Java for Ubuntu Linux.
Valve Linux Engineer Working On A Big Improvement For Old AMD Radeon GPUs
Timur Kristóf as a contractor on Valve’s open-source Linux graphics driver team is known for his work on the RADV Vulkan driver and ACO shader compiler but recently he’s been working on some improvements to the AMDGPU kernel driver. A big feat he’s been tackling is enabling support for analog display connectors within the AMDGPU driver for the “DC” code. Besides a few supported older GPUs having DVI-I connections, this analog support is significant in that it’s a milestone for unblocking the aging GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 GPUs from using the modern AMDGPU driver by default.
Bash 5.3 Released With Many Improvements
Three years since the Bash 5.2 release and one year since the first alpha release, GNU Bash 5.3 was released overnight as the newest step forward for this popular shell used on Linux and other operating systems.
Hyprland Wayland Compositor Launches Subscription Service For “Premium Desktop Experience”
The Hyprland Wayland compositor that is popular with some Linux enthusiasts today formally announced Hyprperks, its new paid subscription service offering a “premium desktop experience” and other benefits.
FFmpeg 8.0 Preparing For Release In August With Many Great Features
We are just a few weeks out from seeing the release of the FFmpeg 8.0 multimedia library with many new features and improvements for this widely-used open-source software.
Servo Web Engine Further Tuning Performance, Screen Reader & Other New Features
The Servo open-source web layout engine continues advancing with its demo Servoshell and continued work around making it suitable for embedding into other software. The Servo project this morning published their latest monthly status update to inform the community what they have been up to the past several weeks.
GNOME 49 Alpha Released With X11 Support Disabled By Default, Many New Features
The GNOME 49 Alpha “49.alpha” release was just announced as the first formal test release in the road to the GNOME 49 desktop release due out in September.
New FFmpeg AVX-512 Optimizations Hit Up To 36x The Performance Of Plain C Code
Some commits merged today to FFmpeg Git provide additional hand-tuned Assembly code for AVX-512 with capable Intel and AMD processors.
NVIDIA Bringing CUDA To RISC-V
NVIDIA announced this week that they are bringing their CUDA software to RISC-V processors.
Red Hat Announces No-Cost RHEL For Business Developers
Red Hat this morning went public with RHEL for Business Developers, an expansion of their RHEL Developer Program to make it easier for business developers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux at no-cost for their development efforts.
Rust-Written Redox OS Continues Making Progress With Wayland
The Rust-written Redox OS open-source operating system project just published their June 2025 status report to outline recent progress on this innovative platform.
Linux 6.17 Looks To Address An Old & Obscure Kernel Limitation From 1993
Assuming no objections are raised by Linus Torvalds, an early pull request has been submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.17 merge window to address an obscure kernel limitation that has been in place going back all the way to 1993 during the Linux v0.99 kernel days.
Linux 6.16 Ready With Fixes For Old AMD Hardware “Which Wasn’t Even Supposed To Run Linux”
Ahead of the Linux 6.16-rc6 kernel release due out later today, an x86/urgent pull request was sent out today that includes some fixes for old AMD Zen 2 hardware.
DXVK 2.7 Released With Many Improvements & Better Support On Newer Intel GPUs
DXVK 2.7 released today as a major feature update for this translation layer for enabling Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 based games and applications to run atop the Vulkan API. DXVK is a critical piece of Valve’s Steam Play (Proton) software stack for enabling Windows games on Linux.
KDE Plasma 6.5 Brings Rounded Bottom Corners For Windows By Default
KDE Plasma 6.5 is introducing a change that has been “years in the wanting” and that is rounded bottom corners for windows.
