Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 23 min 46 sec ago
Core-Scheduling For Linux 5.14 To Reduce SMT/HT Information Leak Risks, Side Channels
Among the early pull requests for the just-opened Linux 5.14 merge window are the scheduler updates that includes the introduction of Core Scheduling. The Core Scheduling functionality has been in the works for the past few years by multiple vendors for better securing SMT systems following various vulnerabilities coming to light around Hyper Threading...
KVM With Linux 5.14 Brings ARM MTE, Hyper-V Optimizations
The KVM changes were submitted early ahead of the now-open Linux 5.14 merge window...
Linux 5.13 Released With Apple M1 Bringup, Landlock, FreeSync HDMI + Much More
Linus Torvalds has just released the Linux 5.13 kernel as stable...
Linux's New "randomize_kstack_offset" Security Feature Having Minimal Performance Impact
Of the many new features in Linux 5.13 one of the prominent security features is the ability to randomize the kernel stack offset at each system call. With Linux 5.13 stable imminent, here are some performance benchmarks of the impact from enabling this security feature...
Mesa's Exciting Milestones So Far In 2021 From Zink To Great Intel/AMD Open-Source Work
With the half-way point for the year upon us, here is a look back at the most exciting Mesa open-source graphics driver news so far in 2021 with exciting contributions from Microsoft, AMD and Intel continuing to be the most open-source friendly graphics vendors, Zink making remarkable progress for OpenGL over Vulkan, performance optimizations galore, more embedded Vulkan drivers coming about, and other milestones for open-source Linux graphics...
Linux Developers Discuss A Global Counter For Block/Disk Changes
Microsoft and systemd developers are proposing a global counter for block device changes for the Linux kernel to better track changes and having a unique system-wide number for disk and other block device changes rather than on a per-disk basis...
Linux 5.14 HID Input Driver To Handle Programmable Buttons
The hid-input kernel driver with Linux 5.14 is set to see support for "Programmable Buttons" as outlined by the USB HID specification...
More Intel Xe-HP Enablement Code Lands In Mesa 21.2
Back in April was the last time we saw much XeHP specificc ode land in the open-source Mesa driver code while this week there was a fresh batch of code merged...
Fedora 35 To Automatically Use Optimal Encryption Sector Size For Better I/O Performance
With this autumn's Fedora 35 release there should be better performance out-of-the-box for those employing LUKS/dm-crypt encryption while using 4K sector size based storage...
Linux 5.14 Set To See Many New Features, New GPU Support, Other Exciting Changes
Linux 5.13 will debut tomorrow if Linus Torvalds is comfortable with the state of the code-base, which in turn will mark the opening of the Linux 5.14 merge window. Here is a look at what is on the table for this next follow-on version of the Linux kernel...
NVIDIA Proposes The Linux Hardware Timestamping Engine
A proposal by NVIDIA engineers for the mainline Linux kernel would introduce the Hardware Timestamping Engine (HTE) subsystem...
DragonFlyBSD To See Better Low-Level Lock Performance When Heavily Contested
Software running on DragonFlyBSD and making use of pthreads is set to see better performance around low-level locks when heavily contested...
Huawei Proposes In-Kernel Transactional Database For Security Purposes
While some Huawei engineers are currently facing criticism for submitting superfluous kernel patches in an effort to boost their own or the company's standing in the kernel community, other engineers are Huawei are working on more substantive kernel patches. Here's a rather peculiar new patch series out on Friday where a Huawei engineer is effectively proposing an in-kernel transactional database...
KDE Pushes More Plasma Wayland Improvements, Plug-in System For The Konsole
Even with Akademy 2021 this week as the annual KDE developer conference, thanks in part to it being a virtual event the KDE developers still managed to remain quite productive on new code changes...
Coreboot Is Ridding Its Need For Intel's FSP-T Blob
Coreboot making progress on its temporary RAM initialization code (cache as RAM) means that its usage of the FSP-T binary blob is increasingly unnecessary...
Proton 6.3-5 Released With A Number Of Improvements For Windows Games On Linux
Valve and their partners have issued a new version of Proton for powering Steam Play to enjoy Windows games on Linux...
LLVM Clang 12 Benchmarks At Varying Optimization Levels, LTO
Earlier this month were benchmarks looking at GCC 11 performance with varying optimization levels and features like link-time optimizations. Stemming from reader requests, here are now similar reference benchmarks off LLVM Clang 12.0 on the same system with going from -O0 to -Ofast and toggling -march=native and LTO usage.
systemd 249-rc2 Released With New "ConditionOSRelease" Directive
Earlier this month systemd 249-rc1 arrived with a variety of new features and improvements. Now for closing out the month is a second release candidate...
The 13 Most Interesting Changes Of Linux 5.13 From Apple M1 To Security Enhancements
If all is looking well on Sunday, Linus Torvalds will be releasing Linux 5.13 as stable rather than going with a 5.13-rc8 test release and pushing the final version back by an additional release. In either case, Linux 5.13 is coming out soon and with many new features in tow...
MyGNUHealth 1.0 - GNU Looks To Get More Involved With Personal Health Records
Among the many projects under the GNU umbrella, the GNU Health official project has been about working on the libre digital health ecosystem and their most recent effort is on MyGNUHealth as an effort around libre personal health records...