Phoronix

Feature work on Mesa 20.2 is now over with the code having been branched today and Mesa 20.2-RC1 subsequently issued...

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver updates were sent in today for the Linux 5.9 kernel merge window. There are some big additions particularly with AMD Sienna Cichlid and Navy Flounder landing as Navi 2 parts but also a lot of other changes in tow...

For those that prefer waiting until the first point release of a new Ubuntu Long Term Support series before upgrading, Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS is out with the latest bug and security fixes for the "Focal Fossa" release...

Fedora's less talked about "Internet of Things" (IoT) edition is looking to be promoted to an official spin for Fedora 33...

The Linux perf events changes for the performance monitoring subsystem were already sent in and pulled for the in-development Linux 5.9 kernel...

GNU C Library 2.32 (glibc 2.32) is now available as this important library for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems...

The release of PHP 8.0 is now one step closer to reality with the first beta being issued today and this also marking the feature freeze for this version due out later in the year...

Longtime Linux kernel developer Pavel Machek has taken over as sole maintainer of the LED subsystem. For this first pull request going into Linux 5.9 is a big addition... The multi-color LED framework code has finally been merged...

NVMe 2.0's Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) functionality is now supported by the mainline Linux kernel...

While Fedora 33 is slated to default to the Btrfs file-system for desktop spins, for those on Fedora Server 33 or otherwise not using the defaults will have Stratis Storage 2.1 as another option...

The METRICFS file-system has been in use internally at Google since 2012 for exporting system statistics to their telemetry systems with around 200 statistics being exported per machine. They are now posting the METRICFS patches as open-source for review and possible upstreaming...

Mesa 20.1.5 provides the latest stable open-source Vulkan/OpenGL graphics drivers for the Linux desktop as the newest bi-weekly milestone...

The Free Software Foundation has elected a new president following Richard Stallman's resignation last September from the FSF...

AMD's RadeonSI Gallium3D driver has resorted to disabling SDMA (System DMA) async DMA engine support for all GFX9/Vega hardware due to issues plaguing some APUs...

FS-Cache provides the Linux kernel with a general purpose cache for network file-systems like NFS and AFS but also other special use-cases like ISO9660 file-systems. FS-Cache has been rewritten for better performance and reliability, among other benefits, and while it has been sent in as a pull request for Linux 5.9 even its own developers provide some caution over landing it this cycle...

Being well past the half-way point for the year, here is a look at how Intel's performance-optimized Clear Linux distribution is performing compared to its rolling state last December. Plus there are also benchmarks looking at how the current Clear Linux is performing against other rolling-release distributions.

Sent out over the weekend was a patch series for the Intel Linux kernel graphics driver entitled "Time, where did it go?" This set of 42 patches aims to provide incremental improvements to the driver to offset a performance regression in Linux 5.7 that Intel hasn't been able to track down. This this increased complication of the driver to offset the regression is now under the microscope...

LibreOffice 7.0 has been released! Making LibreOffice 7.0 so exciting is that the Cairo code was replaced with Google's Skia library and in the process gaining optional support for GPU accelerating the user-interface with Vulkan...

Google engineers have been working on the Machine Function Splitter as their means of making binaries up to a few percent faster thanks to this compiler-based approach. They are now seeking to upstream the Machine Function Splitter into LLVM...

The hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem has a new driver that is likely to excite some enthusiasts wanting greater control over thermal monitoring and fan control for their systems...