Phoronix

Following a small delay, Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS has been released as the latest point release for this current Long Term Support series for Ubuntu Linux...

While the Blender open-source 3D modeling software decided three years ago that they would aim for quarterly releases and so delivering four releases per year, they have now decided to shift to delivering just three releases per year...

The Network File-System (NFS) client and server changes have landed for the in-development Linux 6.3 kernel...

Google has published a list of the participating open-source organizations for this year's Google Summer of Code...

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem updates that also include the new accelerator "accel" subsystem updates have been submitted and subsequently merged for the Linux 6.3 kernel. This pull has a lot of changes to these kernel graphics drivers as well as the first two AI accelerator drivers as part of the new kernel area...

Intel's open-source Compute-Runtime stack for OpenCL and oneAPI Level Zero support along with the Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC) had been on a rhythm of typically seeing new tagged releases every week or two... Quite nice and living up to the open-source development philosophy of "release early, release often." That persisted for a long time until Q4'22 when the releases became less frequent. In early December though the release train stopped and not until this morning has there been a new release of the Compute-Runtime and IGC...

Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) is one of the new features with 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors but is limited this generation to deployment by a few select cloud partners. For Linux 6.3 this feature for hardware-isolated virtual machines is continuing to be further refined...

Fwupd 1.8.11 was released earlier today as the newest update to this open-source firmware updating solution largely used on Linux systems for flashing motherboard/system firmware as well as various peripherals/devices...

After a lengthy release cycle due to blocker bugs and delays in issuing new release candidates, Mesa 23.0 was released overnight as the newest version of this collection of open-source graphics drivers used on Linux and other platforms...

Intel engineers continue carrying out much of the upstream Linux kernel enablement for the Compute Express Link (CXL) subsystem for supporting this high-speed open standard for servers. For the Linux 6.3 cycle is yet more feature work ready for the mainline kernel...

A patch series started by Intel to improve the Linux kernel's fair scheduler code, which has also seen testing/feedback from AMD engineers and other stakeholders, continues to be improved upon. The focus of this patch series is on avoiding too many cross-CPU wake-ups when they are unnecessary. In doing so, these patches help enhance the Linux performance particularly on high core count systems...

Autonomous driving technology company Mobileye has contributed to The Khronos Group an open-source OpenCL tensor and tiling library...

AMD today released xf86-video-amdgpu 23.0 as their first X.Org DDX display driver update in one year...

The Rusticl Rust-based OpenCL driver implementation that was merged last year into Mesa 22.3 has been an extremely promising effort. One of the issues though is that with the current mainline state inside Mesa has lacked support for working with AMD Radeon GPUs via the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver, but that is now coming to fruition...

The x86 CPU updates have been merged for the Linux 6.3 kernel that include a few new features worth mentioning for AMD and Intel customers...

A Phoronix reader pointed out that there are initial code that landed for adding RISC-V processor support to Microsoft's .NET runtime...

The HID subsystem updates for Linux 6.3 have been submitted and they contain a number of exciting input updates for this spring 2023 kernel version from the introduction of HID-BPF to native Steam Deck controller interface handling...

While Ubuntu Linux hasn't provided Flatpak support out-of-the-box due to their preference of using their own Snap app packaging/distribution format, Ubuntu flavors/spins have to this point been able to pre-install Flatpak support if they desired. However, for the 23.04 "Lunar Lobster" cycle and moving forward, Ubuntu flavors will no longer be permitted to install Flatpak packages by default...

A week after seeing X.Org display driver updates for old Trident and S3 Graphics hardware, a new release of xf86-video-ark is now available that provides the open-source UMS display driver support for old ARK Logic hardware. ARK Logic only lasted through the 1990's as a purveyor of PCI video cards...

As part of the Linux networking updates for the Linux 6.3 cycle in addition to the BIG TCP support for IPv4 that can yield higher throughput and lower latency, another networking change worth pointing out is the introduction of the "ath12k" driver for Qualcomm WiFi 7 hardware support...