Items tagged with Linux
Io_uring was introduced in 2019 with Linux kernel 5.1, and its purpose was to help improve the efficiency and flexibility of input and output operations on Linux. While this led to significant performance gains, it also led to critical blind spots for Linux security tools. Most recently, security researchers have...
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A leaker on X (formerly Twitter) claims Valve is getting release a version of SteamOS for desktop systems, which if true would effectively extend the Linux-based platform's reach beyond the realm of gaming handhelds. The rumor surfaced just before Valve released its SteamOS 3.7.0 Preview build with some key tweaks to the operating system's
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Hidden away among the hullabaloo of Google's March Pixel feature drop lies a feature many enthusiasts and developers have asked for years—the Linux Terminal app. This Debian-based Linux environment is now available for Pixel phones with the latest stable update. This means users can load a portable desktop distro on...
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Linux is a modern operating system that supports all of the latest technologies, but it's also a legacy-friendly system that dates back to 1991. If it's a computer, you can probably run Linux on it, except that, owing to its origins in 1991, Linux technically requires at least a 32-bit CPU and a few megabytes of RAM...
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Microsoft’s latest set of updates delivered during patch Tuesday is causing headaches for users who are dual booting Linux alongside Windows. One of the updates issued was supposed to address a vulnerability found in the GRUB2 boot loader used by several versions of Linux, which could allow attackers to bypass secure...
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If you've read reviews of various PC gaming handheld systems, you've probably noted that almost all of them compare the machine against the Steam Deck and come to the conclusion that using Windows is a downside. In other words, most reviews will tell you that being saddled with Windows (instead of using Linux as the...
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"The year of the Linux desktop" is a long-standing meme among PC enthusiasts, but thanks to controversial decisions by Microsoft, continual development effort from Linux lovers, and the massive success of Valve's Steam Deck, Linux is seeing greater adoption than ever among consumer PC users.
Intel has had excellent...
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Over the past few days, the security world has been abuzz with the discovery of a backdoor snuck into a compression utility called xz-utils. While this backdoor was effectively a near miss, getting caught before it became pervasive, it goes to show that with a bit of social engineering and laying low for a while, you...
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The graphics card market has one trend it follows in perpetuity, and that is the constant need for companies to develop further ahead than the competition. While NVIDIA has recently been in the spotlight thanks to its GeForce RTX Super GPUs, AMD is not one to sit on the sidelines. Thanks to updates to Linux, we now...
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Everyone hates the infamous Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD), but these diagnostic displays are a necessary evil to inform users what went wrong when their computer crashes. Windows has had this feature for decades, but recently it was revealed that Linux is finally getting its own Blue Screen of Death feature, and it's...
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While it's normal for desktop and mobile CPUs to differ somewhat, you don't normally expect to see the mobile version of a chip support fewer instructions. According to a Linux kernel commit spotted by Linux enthusiast InstLatX86 though, that's exactly what we're going to see with Intel's next-generation Arrow Lake-S...
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While Windows is nearly ubiquitous, great for convenience and it offers a familiar end-user experience, some things are more easily done on Linux. Given this odd juxtaposition of popularity versus utility, threat actors targeting Linux are finding a target-rich environment that can still fly under the radar for the...
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Windows is by far the most popular platform for playing games on PC, including titles on Steam, but what about Mac and Linux? For a long while, Mac ranked second on Steam, though that just changed and probably for good. According to the latest Steam hardware and software survey results (for July 2023), Linux now has a...
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If you read that headline and thought, "what the heck, Zen 4 just came out," I have bad news for you, friend. The Ryzen 7000 series processors for desktop and their Socket AM5 platform came out last September—over nine months ago. It'll still be a long while yet before we see the release of any Zen 5 processors, but...
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Meteor Lake is the codename for Intel's first "disaggregated" processors made from discrete tiles rather than as monolithic pieces of silicon. They're expected to be fairly low-power and relatively modest in terms of specifications, at least compared to the current power-thirsty Raptor Lake CPUs.
Leaks have shown...
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Staunch Linux advocates have been saying for some time that the Unix derivative's application performance outstrips that of Windows, assuming all other factors are equal. Valve even proved it back in 2012 by porting Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux as part of its original Steam Machine push.
How gaming performance compares...
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The Steam Deck doesn't run Windows. That's right: a gaming handheld based on PC-equivalent hardware, much closer to a full PC than the Xbox or PlayStation, runs Windows PC games on a non-Windows operating system. This is achieved through the herculean efforts of the developers behind myriad open-source software, most...
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Windows has moved to a policy of forced updates, and this has caused no end of problems for users that lack the savvy to troubleshoot when things go wrong. In faint defense of Microsoft, it's pretty rare that Windows updates cause hardware damage, though. That's what's happening to certain folks with Intel graphics...
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Using Intel's Arc discrete GPUs in Linux has worked well enough for a while; Intel's graphics drivers in Linux have historically been quite good. However, they wouldn't be identified properly—they simply showed up as "Intel(R) Graphics." The latest Mesa update, version 22.3-devel, corrects that, and in the process...
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There are a great many advantages to working with free and open-source software (FOSS), and your author here is an outspoken supporter of such source-sharing ways. We probably don't need to explain the advantages, but suffice to say that software developed as a community effort can end up more secure and much more...
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We love to watch a good dogfight, especially when the two opponents can be considered rivals. You know, Celtics versus Lakers (go Celtics!), Red Sox versus Yankees (go Red Sox!), and so forth. In the realm of tech, there's Windows versus Linux on the software side, and a new set of benchmarks pit the two against each...
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Game streaming services are gaining steam as viable alternatives to spending big money on decked out PCs and dedicated gaming consoles, and they've come a long way in a relatively short time. One of the benefits is they're mostly platform agnostic. Or they should be—there are multiple reports that Microsoft's Xbox...
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