Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 36 min ago
Firefox Gets AV1 VA-API Acceleration Sorted Out
Thanks to Red Hat developer Martin Stránský, he has managed to get the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) working for AV1 content within the Firefox web browser...
Microsoft To Acquire Activision Blizzard
Microsoft announced plans this morning to acquire Activision Blizzard in a nearly $69 billion (USD) deal...
LVFS Activity Going Wild Ahead Of New Security Disclosure Requiring Firmware Update
The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) that integrates with Fwupd for delivering firmware updates primarily to Linux users is surging with around three times the normal traffic volume. Unfortunately, this boost in traffic appears to be due to vendor(s) releasing new system firmware updates ahead of disclosing a presumptive security issue...
AMD Radeon Open-Source OpenGL Driver Expands Its Sparse Texture Capabilities
At the end of last year AMD introduced OpenGL sparse texture support into its RadeonSI Gallium3D driver. This functionality for Vega GPUs and newer flipped on ARB_sparse_texture support while now with the very latest Mesa 22.0-devel code ARB_sparse_texture2 is now flipped on too...
Qt Launches Digital Advertising Platform To Integrate Ads Into App UIs
The Qt Company this morning announced Qt Digital Advertising 1.0 as its new ad platform that allows for developers to easily integrate advertising campaigns into Qt-based, cross-platform applications...
NVIDIA CUDA 11.6 Brings Convenient "-arch=native", Defaults To New "GSP" Driver Mode
NVIDIA has released CUDA 11.6 as the latest version of their widely used but proprietary GPU compute stack. With CUDA 11.6 there are some good improvements and new features in store...
Some Older AMD Systems Can Boot Faster On Linux 5.17+
A change merged overnight with the libata subsystem updates for Linux 5.17 means that some older AMD hardware will be able to boot quicker by avoiding an otherwise mandated sleep period...
Folio Improvements For Linux 5.17, Large Folio Patches Posted
Back in November memory folios were merged into Linux 5.16 as a fundamental change to the memory management code. Now for Linux 5.17 there are improvements for folios merged and then out likely for Linux 5.18 is introducing the notion of large folios...
GNOME 42 Alpha Released With A Lot Of GTK4 Porting, Other Improvements
The alpha release of GNOME 42 is now available for testing...
GCC 12 Moves On To Stage 4 Development With Many New Compiler Features
GCC 12 as this year's annual GNU Compiler Collection feature release has moved on to "stage four" development with likely releasing GCC 12.1 in April...
Platform Firmware Runtime Update & Telemetry Feature Submitted For Linux 5.17
Last September I was the first to call attention to Intel working on a new feature to allow updating some system firmware components without needing to reboot such as for mission critical servers that try to avoid downtime at all costs. That Intel "Seamless Update" feature also known as Platform Firmware Runtime Update and Telemetry (PFRUT) has now been sent in for mainlining with Linux 5.17...
FFmpeg 5.0 Aims To Be An LTS Release
FFmpeg 5.0 has now been formally christened as for what is aiming to be a Long-Term Support (LTS) release for this widely-used, cross-platform and open-source multimedia library...
Intel's Former Vulkan Driver Lead Dev Lands Great Role For Improving Linux Graphics
Jason Ekstrand who was the lead developer of Intel's open-source "ANV" Vulkan Linux driver left Intel in December and has now revealed details about his new role...
Lenovo USB-C 7-in-1 Hub On Linux
For those considering the Lenovo USB-C 7-in-1 Hub for connecting to your Lenovo laptop for enjoying USB-C power charging, HDMI output, and additional USB ports, it does work out on Linux. While there have been some users running into seemingly firmware-related issues, at least with my testing over the past month this $50~60 (USD) USB-C hub has been working out well under Linux.
Linux 5.17 Picks Up A Real-Time Analysis Tool
A new tool added to the kernel source tree with Linux 5.17 is rtla to serve for real-time Linux performance and tracing analysis...
Some Tablets/Convertibles With Linux 5.17 Will Now Have Working Pen Support
In addition to Linux 5.17 introducing Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) support for that new industry standard for styluses/pens that can work cross-device, the input subsystem updates for this kernel also add active pen support for a few more tablets...
Rust For Linux Kernel Patches Revised With Upgraded Rust Toolchain, Build Improvements
Miguel Ojeda has published his third iteration of the patches implementing the basic infrastructure for supporting the Rust programming language within the Linux kernel...
GhostBSD 22.01.12 Released With Automatic Detection For Old AMD GPUs
For those wanting a desktop-friendly, easy-to-use BSD operating system to try out the GhostBSD project is one of the better bets in modern times. GhostBSD 22.01.12 is now available with a variety of fixes and improvements for this desktop-minded BSD...
Developer Steps Up Wanting To Maintain Linux's FBDEV Subsystem
The Linux kernel's frame-buffer device "FBDEV" subsystem has thankfully been on the decline over the past number of years thanks to the success of the more useful DRM/KMS drivers and having FBDEV compatibility emulation support. While not actively maintained, the FBDEV subsystem and some drivers remain within the Linux kernel and are used with some interest primarily in some legacy/embedded environments. The subsystem was orphaned while now a Linux kernel developer has stepped up to serve as its maintainer...
Mumble 1.4 Released For Open-Source Voice Chat
It's been over two years since Mumble 1.3 was released for this open-source VoIP / voice chat program that is popular with gamers and open-source enthusiasts while today it's been succeeded by Mumble 1.4...