Open-source News

Recently the mainline Linux kernel has seen a lot of improvements to its feature set when compiling it under LLVM's Clang rather than GCC as traditionally the only supported compiler. The most recent feature being brought to the Linux kernel when using Clang is finally allowing the use of compiler profile guided optimizations (PGO) for squeezing even greater performance out of the system by letting the compiler leverage the real-world profiles/metrics collected to make more informed code generation / optimization decisions...

One of the most promising BSD-based desktop distributions in recent times has been helloSystem that wants to be the macOS of BSDs with a polished desktop experience. helloSystem has been making good progress towards their goals in recent months and this weekend now issued version 0.5...

On Friday afternoon Intel released a new version of their ISPC compiler, the Implicit SPMD Program Compiler, that supports a variant of the C programming language with extensions around single-program, multiple-data programming for CPU and GPU execution. Not only does this release prepare support for upcoming Intel CPUs but also adds support now for Apple's Arm processors...

Cloud4C awarded Linux, Open Source databases migration to Microsoft Azure  Telangana Today

Cloud4C awarded Linux, Open Source databases migration to Microsoft Azure  Telangana Today

The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) saw queued into its "dev" tree this week the new compress_cache mount option ahead of the upcoming Linux 5.14 cycle...

F2FS Picking Up "compress_cache" Feature With Linux 5.14  Phoronix

KDE developers didn't spend much time basking over their Plasma 5.22 release this week as they have already begun lining up changes for the first point release, new feature work for Plasma 5.23, and other improvements to this open-source desktop environment...

After a long and tough year, I've been looking forward to once again sharing my love of Python and open source software with other people, especially middle and high school students. Before the pandemic, I co-wrote a grant to teach Python programming to middle school students using Raspberry Pi computers. Like many other plans, COVID-19 put mine on hold for over a year. Fortunately, vaccines and the improved health in my state, New York, have changed the dynamic.

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Transparent Hugepages Are Coming To RISC-V On Linux  Phoronix

The Linux kernel's RISC-V support continues picking up remaining features not yet wired up beyond the base architecture support. The latest is transparent hugepages (THP) to be supported for RISC-V with Linux 5.14...

Linux inventor Linus Torvalds rebukes vaccine skeptics  Market Research Telecast

Last month we reported on CUDA documentation pointing to the NVIDIA 470 driver series to be the last supporting GeForce GTX 600/700 Kepler GPUs and that has now been summed up more formally with new guidance out of NVIDIA...

NVIDIA Confirms Plans To Drop "Kepler" GPU Driver Support  Phoronix

A Passion for Operating Systems: An Illinois Undergraduate's Contributions to Linux  Illinois Computer Science News

Intel's Linux engineers continue squaring away the next-generation Alder Lake hybrid processor support. In addition to continued graphics driver work and other platform device IDs being added for the upcoming Linux 5.14 kernel, it looks like ADL's Thunderbolt/USB4 support will be merged too...

Intel Alder Lake Thunderbolt/USB4 Support For Linux 5.14  Phoronix

Rescuing a Linux system from near disaster  Network World

Last year Intel's updated ISA extensions reference guide was updated with references to Xeon "Sapphire Rapids" having High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) given new HBM-related error codes. Now it's even more clear there are Xeon CPUs coming to market with onboard HBM memory as Intel has begun submitting Linux kernel driver changes...

Linux Kernel Prepares For Intel Xeon CPUs With On-Package HBM Memory  Phoronix