Phoronix

Linux 5.13 Features From Apple M1 To New GPU Support, Security Additions

Mon, 05/10/2021 - 01:45

Following the two week merge window, feature development on the Linux 5.13 kernel is slated to end today with the release of Linux 5.13-rc1. Here is a look at some of the most interesting new features and improvements for this kernel that in turn should debut as stable around the end of June.

China Is Launching A New Alternative To Google Summer of Code, Outreachy

Sun, 05/09/2021 - 23:06

The Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS) in cooperation with the Chinese openEuler Linux distribution have been working on their own project akin to Google Summer of Code and Outreachy for paying university-aged students to become involved in open-source software development...

Linux 5.10 LTS Will Be Maintained Through End Of Year 2026

Sun, 05/09/2021 - 22:41

Linux 5.10 as the latest Long Term Support release when announced was only going to be maintained until the end of 2022 but following enough companies stepping up to help with testing, Linux 5.10 LTS will now be maintained until the end of year 2026...

Oracle Continues Working On The Maple Tree For The Linux Kernel

Sun, 05/09/2021 - 21:25

Oracle engineers have continued working on the "Maple Tree" data structure for the Linux kernel as an RCU-safe, range-based B-tree designed to make efficient use of modern processor caches...

Linux 5.13 Brings Simplified Retpolines Handling

Sun, 05/09/2021 - 20:50

In addition to work like Linux 5.13 addressing some network overhead caused by Retpolines, this next kernel's return trampoline implementation itself is seeing a simplification...

Linux 5.13 Adds Support For SPI NOR One-Time Programmable Memory Regions

Sun, 05/09/2021 - 18:13

The Linux 5.13 kernel has initial support for dealing with SPI one-time programmable (OTP) flash memory regions...

Libaom, SVT-AV1 Mark New Open-Source AV1 Encoder Releases This Week

Sun, 05/09/2021 - 12:00

This week happened to see new releases of two prominent open-source AV1 video encoders...

Loongson 2K1000 Support Merged For Linux 5.13

Sat, 05/08/2021 - 23:56

Support for the Loongson 2K1000 is finally mainline with the forthcoming Linux 5.13 kernel...

Linux 5.13 Merges Support For Intel DG1 Graphics Platform Monitoring / Telemetry

Sat, 05/08/2021 - 21:14

Outside of the i915 kernel graphics driver one of the areas Linux 5.13 is seeing more discrete graphics card bring-up work is within their PMT driver for enabling platform monitoring / telemetry support with this inaugural Intel PCIe graphics card...

PowerPC Pull Brings 32-Bit Improvements For Linux 5.13 - eBPF + KFENCE

Sat, 05/08/2021 - 19:12

The PowerPC architecture pull request for the Linux 5.13 cycle brings some improvements to its 32-bit support and other enhancements...

GIMP 2.99.6 Released But Still No Idea When GIMP 3.0 Will Be Ready

Sat, 05/08/2021 - 18:13

GIMP 2.99.6 is out today as the latest development release of this popular open-source image manipulation program...

KDE Developers Polish The Desktop Ahead Of Next Month's Plasma 5.22

Sat, 05/08/2021 - 17:55

KDE developers remain very active polishing up the KDE desktop and addressing various bugs ahead of next month's Plasma 5.22 feature release...

Wine 6.8 Released With Support For Loading Libraries From Arch-Specific Subdirectories

Sat, 05/08/2021 - 04:55

Wine 6.8 was just released as the newest bi-weekly development snapshot providing the latest support for running the latest Windows games and applications under Linux, macOS, and BSD systems...

Windows 10 Build 21370 vs. Ubuntu 21.04 Linux On AMD Ryzen 5900X

Sat, 05/08/2021 - 01:52

Last month when carrying out tests of Windows 10 vs. Linux on the Intel Core i9 11900K "Rocket Lake" processor we were very surprised to see Windows 10 frankly performing so well compared to Ubuntu and picking up more wins than usual. That unexpectedly strong showing for Windows 10 might be due to Intel's P-State behavior with Rocket Lake or other power management tuning or there the lack of on Linux at this time. But it led me to wondering if the latest Windows 10 updates spelled out anything different on the AMD Ryzen side... So here are some benchmarks of the latest Microsoft Windows 10 against Ubuntu 21.04 on the same AMD Ryzen 9 5900X system.

Intel Posts Nearly 100 Patches For GuC Submission, Works To Integrate DRM Scheduler

Fri, 05/07/2021 - 22:30

Intel's open-source graphics driver developers volleyed an initial set of nearly 100 experimental patches working on GuC submission support as they work towards integrating the DRM scheduler into their graphics driver...

FreeBSD Is Off To A Good 2021 Start With FreeBSD 13.0, PIE By Default, helloSystem

Fri, 05/07/2021 - 21:11

The FreeBSD project published their Q1 status report yesterday that outlines the progress they made over the past quarter on advancing this leading open-source BSD operating system...

Linux 5.13 Yanks A NVIDIA NVLink Driver For Lack Of Open-Source User

Fri, 05/07/2021 - 18:14

The VFIO changes for the Linux 5.13 kernel aren't particularly exciting this cycle but one of the changes does raise some eyebrows with the VFIO NVIDIA NVLink2 driver being removed. This driver is being removed as it shouldn't have been even added in the first place for lack of an open-source client/user exercising it...