Open-source News

The review embargo just lifted for the AMD Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors ahead of their retail availability this week. As such there are a few Phoronix articles today looking at these Zen 4 processors under Linux and many benchmarks whole several more follow-up articles will be coming over the weeks ahead. For the launch-day review I have the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X processors. Let's take a look at the significant performance improvements to find with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 series under Linux.

While much of AMD's briefings for the Ryzen 7000 desktop series were focused on gaming and other consumer workloads, one of the most exciting aspects for me with the Ryzen 7000 series is AMD now supporting AVX-512. But rather going for a 512-bit FPU data path and the possibility of reduced clock frequencies and power/thermal concerns, they employed a 256-bit "double pumping" strategy. When getting the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X in the lab, exploring the AMD Zen 4 AVX-512 performance was one of the areas I was most excited to evaluate. From the benchmarks about to be shown, AMD's initial AVX-512 implementation is promising and has me all the more excited for finding it on AMD EPYC "Genoa" processors.

Today the review embargo expires on the AMD Ryzen 7000 series desktop processors ahead of their retail availability this week. Over the past two weeks I have been testing the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X processors as the initial review samples (I should be receiving the Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 7 7700X CPUs this week, AMD is staggering their review seeding of the different models). In this article to get things started are my initial Linux gaming benchmarks with the Ryzen 9 7900X/7950X compared to an assortment of other AMD and Intel systems.

New SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux Version 9.6.2 Adds Support for the Latest Versions of Key Operating Systems and Azure Shared Disk  GlobeNewswire

Trombone Champ is my new favourite rhythm game  GamingOnLinux

Nick Desaulniers with Google who has been known for his contributions around compiling the Linux kernel with LLVM/Clang has recently taken to the challenge of being able to compile the Linux kernel under macOS...

Experimental Patch Gets The ARM64 Linux Kernel Compiling Under macOS  Phoronix

AMD engineer K Prateek Nayak recently uncovered that a ~20 year old chipset workaround in the Linux kernel still being applied to modern AMD systems is responsible in some cases for hurting performance on modern Zen hardware. Fortunately, a fix is on the way for limiting that workaround to old systems and in turn helping with performance for modern systems...

A 20 Year Old Chipset Workaround Has Been Hurting Modern AMD Linux Systems  Phoronix

Blizzard don't officially support Steam Deck / Linux but they still fix issues for it  GamingOnLinux

Blizzard don't officially support Steam Deck / Linux but they still fix issues for it  GamingOnLinux

Wine 7.18 rolls out with Unicode 15 support  GamingOnLinux

Wine 7.18 rolls out with Unicode 15 support  GamingOnLinux

How to Benchmark disks on Linux  BollyInside

Linux Fu: Atomic Power  Hackaday

20-year-old Linux workaround is still slowing down AMD systems  Ars Technica

New SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux Version 9.6.2 Adds Support for the Latest Versions of Key Operating Systems and Azure Shared Disk  GlobeNewswire

Linux 6.0 Merges The AMD Performance Fix For The Old "Dummy Wait" Workaround  Phoronix

The Windows Subsystem for Linux Now Works With More Apps  How-To Geek

OpenSSF: on a mission to improve security of open source software Gaurav Kamathe Mon, 09/26/2022 - 03:00

Open source software (OSS), once a niche segment of the development landscape, is now ubiquitous. This growth is fantastic for the open source community. However, as the usage of OSS increases, so do concerns about security. Especially in mission-critical applications— think medical devices, automobiles, space flight, and nuclear facilities—securing open source technology is of the utmost priority. No individual entity, whether developers, organizations, or governments, can single-handedly solve this problem. The best outcome is possible when all of them come together to collaborate.

The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) formed to facilitate this collaboration. OpenSSF is best described in its own words:

The OpenSSF is a cross-industry collaboration that brings together leaders to improve the security of open source software by building a broader community with targeted initiatives and best practices.

Vision

The technical vision of OpenSSF is to handle security proactively, by default. Developers are rightly at the center of this vision. OpenSSF seeks to empower developers to learn secure development practices and automatically receive guidance on them through the day-to-day tools they use. Researchers who identify security issues can send this information backward through the supply chain to someone who can rapidly address the issue. Auditors and regulators are encouraged to devise security policies that can be easily enforced via tooling, and community members provide information on the components they use and test regularly.

Mobilization plan

OpenSSF drafted a mobilization plan based on input from open source developers and leaders from US federal agencies. The result is a set of high-impact actions aimed at improving the resiliency and security of open source software. Based on this plan, 10 streams of investments have been identified, including security education, risk assessment, memory safety, and supply chain improvement. While discussion of these issues is widespread, OpenSSF is the platform that has collected and prioritized these concerns over others to ensure a secure open source ecosystem.

Working groups

Because the 10 streams of investments are quite diverse, OpenSSF is divided into multiple working groups. This strategy allows individual teams to focus on a specific area of expertise and move forward without getting bogged down with more general concerns. The working groups have something for everyone: Developers can contribute to security tooling, maintainers can handle software repositories, and others can contribute by educating developers on best practices, identifying metrics for open source projects, or identifying and securing the critical projects that form the core of the OSS ecosystem.

More on security The defensive coding guide 10 layers of Linux container security SELinux coloring book More security articles Industry participation

Multiple software vendors have become members of OpenSSF in their own capacity. These vendors are important players in the IT ecosystem, ranging from cloud service providers and operating system vendors to companies hosting OSS repositories, creating security tooling, creating computing hardware, and more. The benefit is getting inputs from a variety of sources that others might not be aware of and then collaboratively working on those issues.

Getting involved

There are a variety of ways to participate in the OpenSSF initiative based on your expertise and the amount of time you can set aside for it:

• Sign up for their mailing list to follow the latest updates and discussions and update your calendar with OpenSSF meetings.
• If you are looking for more interactive communication, consider joining their Slack channel.
• Browse through their past meetings on their YouTube channel.
• Organizations can consider becoming a member of OpenSSF.
• Developers can quickly look up the GitHub repo for the software projects they are working on.
• Most important, consider joining a working group of your choice and make a difference.

Conclusion

The security industry is growing and needs active participation from the open source community. If you are starting out or wish to specialize in security, OpenSSF provides a platform to work on the right problems in the security space under the guidance of experienced peers in security.

Developers, businesses, and government agencies are working together to ensure the security of open source software, and you can join them.

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