# Performance Optimizations, NVIDIA Vera, Arc Pro B70 & Other Linux Highlights From Q2 > Source: > Published: 2026-07-01 00:24:26+00:00 # Performance Optimizations, NVIDIA Vera, Arc Pro B70 & Other Linux Highlights From Q2 As the last planned article on Phoronix of Q2, here is a look back at what excited readers the most in the second quarter. There were 872 original news articles this quarter as well as 54 Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured benchmark articles. Here is what excited readers the most over these past three months. Linux hardware testing from Intel Arc Pro B70 to the NVIDIA Vera CPU were quite popular. Plus various ongoing Linux performance benchmarks of software optimizations and other unique topics. On the news side, continued Linux kernel optimizations, kernel / mailing list drama, and the continued churn caused by AI/LLMs captivated many readers this quarter. If you enjoyed the more than 900 original articles on Phoronix this quarter, please at the very least disable any ad-blocker when viewing this site. Or you can The most popular Q2 news included: And the most popular featured reviews / benchmark articles: Here's to hopefully an exciting Q3. Linux hardware testing from Intel Arc Pro B70 to the NVIDIA Vera CPU were quite popular. Plus various ongoing Linux performance benchmarks of software optimizations and other unique topics. On the news side, continued Linux kernel optimizations, kernel / mailing list drama, and the continued churn caused by AI/LLMs captivated many readers this quarter. If you enjoyed the more than 900 original articles on Phoronix this quarter, please at the very least disable any ad-blocker when viewing this site. Or you can [subscribe to Phoronix Premium](https://www.phoronix.com/phoronix-premium)to view the site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode viewing, and other features. Tips via[PayPal](https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EA79CCDLNFJNW)or[Stripe](https://buy.stripe.com/28o02d1yG1Lp8H67ss)are graciously appreciated as well in continuing to support operations during these difficult times for web publishing, especially with being a one-man-band running Phoronix. This month also marked[22 years since starting Phoronix](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Phoronix-Turns-22).The most popular Q2 news included: [AWS Engineer Reports PostgreSQL Performance Halved By Linux 7.0, But A Fix May Not Be Easy](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-AWS-PostgreSQL-Drop)*An Amazon/AWS engineer raised the alarms on Friday over the current Linux 7.0 development kernel leading to the throughput for the PostgreSQL database server being around half that of prior kernel versions. The culprit halving the PostgreSQL performance is known but a revert looks like it may not happen and currently suggesting that PostgreSQL may need to be adapted.*[Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-On-Linux-Tops-5p)*If Valve's latest Steam Survey monthly figures are accurate, Steam on Linux enjoyed a very wild month of March. Steam on Linux is now above the 5% threshold and more than twice the size of the Steam on macOS marketshare.*[Arch Linux Now Believes Malware Incident Under Control: More Than 1,500 Affected Packages](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Arch-Linux-AUR-More-Than-1500)*The day started out with Arch Linux's AUR user-contributed repository seeing more than 400 packages compromised with malware. Now in ending out the day they believe all affected commits have been addressed. But it ended up being more than 1,500 affected packages.*[Linux Finally Eliminates The strncpy API After Six Years Of Work, 360+ Patches](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.2-Drops-strncpy)*Linux 7.2 has finally eliminated the strncpy API from the Linux kernel. The strncpy() function for copying up to a specified number of bytes has long been deprecated and after six years of work and hundreds of patches, no more users of the strncpy interface within the Linux kernel remained that it has now been eliminated.*[ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Reaches The Milestone Of Being Able To Run Half-Life](https://www.phoronix.com/news/ReactOS-Running-Half-Life)*ReactOS, the open-source operating system working for binary compatibility with Microsoft Windows computer programs and drivers, has reached the milestone of being able to enjoy the classic game Half-Life running on this open-source platform.*[macOS 27 Beta Breaks The Ability To Boot Asahi Linux](https://www.phoronix.com/news/macOS-27-Beta-Breaks-Asahi)*Asahi Linux is warning its users from trying out the new macOS 27 "Golden Gate" beta released this week by Apple. With macOS 27 beta, the Asahi Linux partition is no longer visible and thus unable to boot to your Apple Silicon Linux installation.*[Valve Developer Improves The Linux Gaming Experience For Limited vRAM Hardware](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Better-Gaming-Low-vRAM)*Natalie Vock of Valve's Linux graphics driver team primarily working on the RADV Vulkan driver has come up with a new interesting creation: patches to the Linux kernel and KDE for sharply improving the gaming experience for those running systems with limited amounts of video memory. Such as for graphics cards with just 8GB of dedicated vRAM, the patches now available -- initially on CachyOS for a nice out-of-the-box experience -- provide a noticeably better Linux gaming experience.*[Arch Linux's AUR Sees More Than 400 Packages Compromised With Malware](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Arch-Linux-AUR-400-Compromised)*The Arch Linux User Repository "AUR" was hit by a large-scale malware campaign this week with more than 400 of these user-supplied packages being compromised.*[Arch Linux AUR Hit By Another Wave Of Now More Sophisticated Malware Attack](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Arch-Linux-AUR-More-Malware)*Just a day after Arch Linux developers believed they got their malware AUR incident under control with 1,500+ packages affected by malware, another round of of AUR malware is now being discovered. This latest round is more sophisticated as with code obfuscation to better conceal the intent.*[Linux 7.1 Expected To Begin Removing i486 CPU Support](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Phasing-Out-i486)*It's finally time: a patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from the Linux kernel. Anyone still using an i486 CPU with an upstream Linux kernel would be incredibly rare and no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support, but in case you are, you can continue to be running one of the existing Linux LTS kernel versions.*[Wine Wayland Driver Merges Pointer Warp Support](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wine-Wayland-Pointer-Warp)*Wine's Wayland native driver has taken another step forward with now supporting the pointer warp "wp_pointer_warp_v1" protocol.*[OpenZFS 2.4.2 Released With Linux 7.0 Kernel Support, Many Bug Fixes](https://www.phoronix.com/news/OpenZFS-2.4.2-Released)*For those making use of OpenZFS on Linux or FreeBSD, OpenZFS 2.4.2 is out today as the newest stable release of this ZFS file-system implementation.*[FreeBSD 15.2 Will Aim For The Nice KDE Desktop Installation Experience](https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-15.2-KDE-Desktop)*FreeBSD 15.0 had aimed to provide a KDE desktop install option from its text-based OS installer to make for a more compelling FreeBSD out-of-the-box desktop experience. That was then delayed to FreeBSD 15.1 but that didn't end up materializing. Now the KDE desktop install option is diverted to FreeBSD 15.2.*[AMD & Intel Roll Out New Linux Updates For Today's Patch Tuesday](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Patch-Tuesday-May-2026)*Today's Patch Tuesday is a busier one than normal for the quarter. Both AMD and Intel have rolled out new updates for Linux customers among other security disclosures today. Thankfully though the vulnerabilities don't appear to be too widespread or impactful.*[DXVK-NVAPI 0.9.2 Further Improves NVIDIA Integration For Steam Play Linux Gaming](https://www.phoronix.com/news/DXVK-NVAPI-0.9.2-Released)*DXVK-NVAPI 0.9.2 is now available for this implementation of NVIDIA's NVAPI/NVOFAPI interfaces atop DXVK and VKD3D-Proton that is used in turn by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for enhanced NVIDIA Linux gaming support.*[The "NTFS Resurrection" Has Occurred For Linux 7.1](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-New-NTFS-Driver)*As a very exciting follow-up to the recent article around the new NTFS driver being submitted for Linux 7.1 to address the shortcomings of the current Paragon NTFS3 driver and the prior read-only NTFS kernel driver, that work has been merged!*[CachyOS Rolls Out A Super-Charged Linux 7.0 Kernel](https://www.phoronix.com/news/CachyOS-Super-Charged-Linux-7.0)*The popular Arch Linux based CachyOS has now rolled out the Linux 7.0 kernel to its users. But beyond re-basing against the latest upstream kernel version it is also carrying some extra patches.*[Debian Is Figuring Out How Age Verification Laws Will Impact It](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Undecided-Age-Laws)*With age verification/attestation laws down to the OS level enacted by California and being decided upon by other US states, it's been a hot topic of discussion in the open-source world. For the Debian project that is strictly volunteer/community-driven unlike various commercial Linux platforms, they are figuring out how such laws will impact them.*[The New Linux Kernel AI Bot Uncovering Bugs Is A Local LLM On Framework Desktop + AMD Ryzen AI Max](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Clanker-T1000-AMD-Ryzen-AI-Max)*Earlier this month on Phoronix we were the first to draw attention to a new fuzzing tool / AI bot uncovering kernel bugs by Greg Kroah-Hartman, the "second in command" for Linux kernel development and stable maintainer. Greg has now shared more light on the "gregkh_clanker_t1000" for this tool that has been uncovering more Linux kernel bugs the past few weeks.*[Ubuntu Linux Will Begin Landing AI Features Throughout The Next Year](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-AI-Features-2026)*Now that Ubuntu 26.04 LTS has shipped, Canonical is opening up on their next major focus for Ubuntu development: lots of AI features.*And the most popular featured reviews / benchmark articles: [Intel Arc Pro B70 Benchmarks With LLM / AI, OpenCL, OpenGL & Vulkan](https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arc-pro-b70-linux)*Last month Intel announced the Arc Pro B70 with 32GB of GDDR6 video memory for this long-awaited Battlemage G31 graphics card. This new top-end Battlemage graphics card with 32 Xe cores and 32GB of GDDR6 video memory offers a lot of potential for LLM/AI and other use cases, especially when running multiple Arc Pro B70s. Last week Intel sent over four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards for Linux testing at Phoronix. Given the current re-testing for the imminent Ubuntu 26.04 release, I am still going through all of the benchmarks especially for the multi-GPU scenarios. In this article are some initial Arc Pro B70 single card benchmarks on Linux compared to other Intel Arc Graphics hardware across AI / LLM with OpenVINO and Llama.cpp, OpenCL compute benchmarks, and also some OpenGL and Vulkan benchmarks. More benchmarks and the competitive compares will come as that fresh testing wraps up, but so far the Arc Pro B70 is working out rather well atop the fully open-source Linux graphics driver stack.*[NVIDIA Vera CPU Benchmarks: Olympus Cores Delivering The Best Performance Ever Seen On ARM](https://www.phoronix.com/review/nvidia-vera-benchmarks)*NVIDIA's Vera data center CPU isn't ramping up until later this year but I recently had the opportunity to try out this new ARM-based CPU designed for agentic AI workloads. NVIDIA's Vera CPU with its in-house-designed Olympus CPU cores ends up packing a heavy-hitting punch with competitiveness to Intel/AMD x86_64 CPUs that I have never seen out of any other ARM or non-x86_64 processors. Continue on with these early benchmarks of the NVIDIA Vera CPU on Linux.*[Running Four Intel Graphics Cards Under Linux On Ubuntu 26.04](https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arc-pro-b70-four)*It's been nearly one year to the week since Intel introduced Project Battlematrix as their initiative for improving their Linux driver support for the Arc Pro B-Series with enhancements such as bettering the multi-GPU support in allowing up to eight Arc Pro GPUs per system as well as other open-source driver optimizations in the era of AI. Recently with the Arc Pro B70 in having four review samples for testing I was finally able to try out the multi-GPU state of the Arc (Pro) graphics cards on Linux with their open-source driver code.*[AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Benchmarks: The Best Desktop Performance For Linux Developers, Creators](https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-9950x3d2-linux)*Today we can finally share performance benchmarks of the long-rumored AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition processor. This new halo product for the Ryzen 9000 series desktop line-up offers captivating performance for developers frequently compiling code, creators, technical computing workloads for students or hobbyists or those not able to afford a Threadripper / EPYC type workstation, or similar heavy computing use. With the 16 cores / 32 threads and both CCDs having 3D V-Cache, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 offers leading performance among current generation desktop processors.*[Firefox 149 vs. Chrome 147 Web Browser Performance On Linux](https://www.phoronix.com/review/firefox-chrome-2026)*It has been a while since featuring a showdown of the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers on Linux. With some fresh benchmarks being overdue plus the new JetStream 3 browser benchmark having been announced last week, here is some fresh data for how these two dominant web browsers are competing on the modern Linux desktop from an Intel Panther Lake system running Ubuntu 26.04.*[CachyOS Linux Performance Leading Over Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Fedora Workstation 44](https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-ubuntu-2604-fedora-44)*It's not too entirely surprising given the aggressive stance that the CachyOS Linux distribution has taken on out-of-the-box performance, but for those curious, it continues largely leading over the newly-released Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora Workstation 44 distributions for the leading performance on modern hardware.*[Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus Performance In 340+ Linux Benchmarks](https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-core-ultra-7-270k-plus)*Last month Intel began shipping the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus "Arrow Lake Refresh" desktop processor. This is a mighty interesting processor for the $349 USD price point with more cores and a larger cache compared to the Core Ultra 7 265K and capable of delivering much of the performance of the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K Arrow Lake processor. In today's article is a look at how well the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus performs under Linux with more than 340 different benchmarks representing a range of Linux workloads from gaming to creator to developer and technical computing uses.*[Intel Arc Pro B70 Open-Source Linux Performance Against NVIDIA RTX & AMD Radeon AI PRO](https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arc-pro-b70)*Last week after receiving the Intel Arc Pro B70 review hardware I began with some benchmarks looking at how the Arc Pro B70 compared to existing Intel GPUs on Linux with their fully open-source driver stack. Today's article features the latest Arc Pro B70 benchmarks under Linux in looking at how the performance and value compares to other NVIDIA RTX and AMD Radeon (AI) PRO workstation graphics cards in the lab.*[CachyOS Delivers More Performance Out Of Intel Panther Lake](https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-panther-lake)*Most of my Intel Panther Lake benchmarking over the past two months for the new Core Ultra Series 3 hardware has been done with Ubuntu Linux given the pervasiveness of it, especially in the corporate/enterprise space. But for those looking at achieving even greater out-of-the-box Linux performance on Intel Panther Lake, the Arch Linux based CachyOS does a pretty fine job at further advancing the performance.*[GCC 16 Produces Faster Binaries Than GCC 15, Competitive Race With LLVM Clang 22](https://www.phoronix.com/review/gcc-16-vs-clang-22)*GCC 16.1 released at the end of April as the latest major, annual feature release to the GNU Compiler Collection. Early benchmarks showed some nice leads for GCC 16 over GCC 15. Continued testing of the new GCC 16 compiler has continued to show overall better performance of the resulting binaries than using GCC 15 on the same hardware and same compiler flags. That led many to wonder about the GCC 16 performance up against the latest LLVM/Clang open-source compiler, which is the focus of today's benchmarking showdown.*[Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Leads Over Windows 11 In Creator Workstation Performance](https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2604-windows-11)*The past few weeks I have been testing out the new HP Z6 G5 A workstation desktop PC. It's a beast in being powered by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9975WX, eight channels of DDR5-5600 memory, and paired with a NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Max-Q workstation graphics card. The full review on the HP Z6 G5 A workstation will be published on Phoronix in the next week or so but given the timing and that it shipped with WIndows 11 Pro, here is a look at how Windows 11 Pro is competing against the newly-released Ubuntu 26.04 LTS in creator/workstation workloads.*[AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" Enjoys Great Performance Gains With Latest Linux Software](https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2604-strix-halo)*With the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out in three weeks, I have been re-testing a number of different devices on this newest Ubuntu release. One of the most significant improvements to note was when running the Framework Desktop with Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" and quantifying the performance gains of the Radeon 8060S Graphics since launch last year. Here's a look at how the Vulkan and OpenGL performance has evolved for the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 since its launch last year in going from Ubuntu 25.04 to Ubuntu 26.04.*[Ubuntu 26.04 Delivers Great Performance Improvements For AMD Strix Point, Especially For RDNA 3.5 Graphics](https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2604-strix-point)*As part of my ongoing testing around the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 release I have been running a lot of benchmarks. After recently showing some nice performance gains for AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" with Ubuntu 26.04, several Phoronix readers inquired about any performance uplift from the more modest but still powerful Strix Point laptops like the popular Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 SKU. Here are benchmarks showing the performance of Ubuntu 26.04 in its near final state compared to Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS with its HWE stack on an ASUS Zenbook S16.*[Nouveau vs. NVIDIA R595 Linux Driver For Workstation Graphics Performance](https://www.phoronix.com/review/nvidia-nouveau-nvk-may2026)*When having the HP Z6 G5 A workstation in the lab for benchmarking, one of the curiosity-driven tests was seeing how well the latest open-source and upstream Nouveau driver stack is competing against the latest official NVIDIA R595 driver for workstations. The official NVIDIA Linux driver stack remains the best positioned software solution for RTX (PRO) hardware but Nouveau continues evolving while awaiting the Nova kernel driver to reach the limelight.*[Linux 7.1 Features: New NTFS Driver, New Intel + AMD Hardware, Performance Optimizations & Modernization](https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-71-features-changes)*The Linux 7.1 development kernel that amounts to nearly 40 million lines has a lot of new features and changes in tow. While Linux 7.1 stable won't be out until mid-June, here is a look at the interesting changes coming with this next stable version of the Linux kernel.*[The Intel Lunar Lake CPU Performance Gains On Linux Over The Past Year](https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-lunar-lake-ubuntu-2604)*Recently I ran benchmarks looking at the Xe2 graphics performance gains on Intel Lunar Lake over the past year with what's shipped by Ubuntu and comparing against our original tests of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition. With those Lunar Lake iGPU benchmarks out of the way, here is a look at how the Lunar Lake CPU performance has evolved on Linux since April 2025.*[Benchmarking The Different CachyOS Linux Kernel Flavors](https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-linux-flavors)*CachyOS ships with a good Linux kernel configuration by default balancing the different features as well as performance. But they also ship a variety of other kernel builds for those preferring a more leading-edge kernel or the current LTS series, a hardened kernel configuration, and more. In this article are some fresh benchmarks of the Arch Linux based CachyOS Linux distribution with some of its main kernel flavors.*[Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus Provides Exceptional Value For Linux Users](https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-core-ultra-5-250k-plus)*After looking at the new Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor earlier this month with its nice performance evolution for Arrow Lake on Linux, today we are looking at the other new Intel desktop CPU offering: the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus that retails for just $219 USD.*[Ubuntu 26.04 Provides More Performance For AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo"](https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2604-ryzen-ai-max)*Last week I provided benchmarks to quantify how the AMD Strix Halo graphics performance has evolved since launch one year ago, in today's article is a look at how the Zen 5 CPU performance with the flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 has evolved under Linux in the year since these exciting APUs began making their way to high-end laptops and desktops. Complementing the nice Radeon 8060S performance gains are also some nice CPU performance benefits quantified when using Ubuntu 26.04.*[Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake Linux Graphics Performance Up ~17% Over Past Year](https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-2604-xe2-lunar-lake)*Given the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release being imminent and also realizing it's been nearly one year to the day since reviewing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition laptop under Linux, I ran some fresh benchmarks for seeing how the integrated Xe2 graphics have evolved on Linux over the past year.*Here's to hopefully an exciting Q3.