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Linux Kernel Space: VirtualBox, Performance, and Graphics
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Dedoimedo ☛ Linux, VirtualBox freeze, unchecked MSR error
Welcome to my latest installment of weird. To wit, you use Linux, say Ubuntu or Fedora or whatnot. You use a virtualization product of some kind. In my case, VirtualBox, but the issue applies to a range of hypervisors. You start a virtual machine, and now and then, it stutters. Along the way, your entire system (the host) becomes unresponsive. I noticed this problem in VirtualBox 7.X onwards, in Kubuntu 22.04 onwards.
It took me a lot of troubleshooting, but I think I've finally figured out the root cause. As it happens, this is another pointless issue slash bug, stemming from a combination of things: kernel bugs, Spectre-family mitigations, host-hypervisor clashes, and then some. In other words, yet another issue that ought to prevent ordinary people from using the Linux desktop in a serious manner. But at least there are funny characters like me who try to make it work. So, if you please, take a look at this tutorial. After me.
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Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Gains 9% Performance Boost on Linux After One Year
A year after its release, we can now see that the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K has achieved a noticeable performance improvement on Linux systems.
According to a report by Phoronix, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K has evolved significantly since its debut. The goal was to determine whether system updates had an impact on performance. Interestingly, results show an improvement of about 9%, thanks to new kernel versions, drivers, and compilers
The study repeated more than 240 tests using the exact same configuration as at launch, but with updated software: Ubuntu 25.10, kernel 6.18, GCC 15.2, Mesa 25.2, and the latest BIOS. These results confirm that the Linux ecosystem around Arrow Lake has matured, allowing the CPU to perform better under different workloads.
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Graphics Stack
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Casey Primozic ☛ Generating 3D Meshes From Text
I recently had a desire to convert text to 3D meshes that I could render and manipulate as part of my Geotoy project and Geoscript language. I did some research into tools and libraries that could solve different pieces of this, and I put together a pipeline that implements the whole thing - yielding nice, 2-manifold 3D meshes with arbitrary fonts, text styles, and more.
This post gives an overview of the whole setup and aims to give anyone else looking to implement something similar everything they need to get it working themselves.
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