Open-source News

Linus Torvalds has officially released the Linux 5.4 "Kleptomaniac Octopus" kernel this evening as was expected. Linux 5.4 is the last major stable kernel release of the year and brings a lot of new hardware support particularly on the graphics processor front, Microsoft exFAT support is finally available, and a plethora of other new features and improvements to existing functionality...

The trials and tribulations of video decoding on Linux  OS News

GNOME 3.35.2 is out as the latest development release on the route to GNOME 3.36 due out next March...

NextCloud Linux Servers Targetted by NextCry Ransomware  Market Research Base

Ubuntu Linux strangely promotes Brony culture on Twitter  BetaNews

While NVIDIA graphics in IBM POWER systems have been known to make a powerful combination for supercomputer deployments, for those wanting a libre GPU compute experience can also use POWER with AMD Radeon's open-source driver with a pending patch to the kernel driver...

Following the initial tests earlier this month from the disclosures of the JCC Erratum (Jump Conditional Code) that required updated Intel CPU microcode to address and on the same day the TSX Async Abort (TAA) vulnerability that required kernel mitigations to address, which I have run benchmarks of those CPU performance impacts individually, readers have requested tests looking at the current overall impact to the mitigations to date.

It's that time of the year for our annual promotion of Phoronix Premium for the US Thanksgiving / Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales week... Here is the latest on how you can show your support for our Linux and open-source news coverage and benchmarking while enjoying the site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, and other benefits...

As part of the KSelfTest updates sent in early for the Linux 5.5 merge window opening tonight/tomorrow, Google's KUnit is included in this pull request as the basic kernel unit testing framework...

KUnit Slated To Land With The Linux 5.5 Kernel For Expanding Kernel Unit Testing  Phoronix

For the imminent Linux 5.5 kernel cycle we have talked about exciting AMD Radeon and Intel graphics driver changes on deck from Navi OvrDrive overclocking to more Intel Tiger Lake and Jasper Lake bits, AMDGPU HDCP support, and other features queued. But what about the open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" Linux driver?..

The Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Will End Out 2019 In Poor Shape Still For Newer GPUs  Phoronix

It was a busy week in the KDE space...

Getting Started with Embedded Linux on RISC-V in QEMU  CNX Software

It's well-known that women are under-represented in computer science and technology. A new initiative led by the NC Department of Public Instruction, Duke University, and IBM is working to reverse that trend by using an open source approach to bringing more computer science instruction into NC public schools.

read more

GNUstep, the longstanding GNU Project implementing Apple's Cocoa frameworks, might end up deprecating support for the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) to focus its compiler support on LLVM's Clang...

64-Bit ARM Updates Sent In Ahead Of The Linux 5.5 Cycle  Phoronix

Catalin Marinas who oversees the 64-bit ARM (ARM64 / AArch64) architecture code within the mainline kernel has already submitted his pull request early for the Linux 5.5 kernel cycle beginning tonight or early on Monday...

In addition to Oracle having shipped a Solaris update this past week, prior to calling it a weekend their virtualization crew released VirtualBox 6.1 RC1...

With the Jump Conditional Code (JCC) Erratum that was made public earlier this month and ushered in new Intel microcode to mitigate this Skylake to Cascade Lake design defect, compiler/toolchain patches have been in the works to help offset the performance cost incurred from the updated microcode. Besides the GNU Assembler work we've talked about several times since JCC came to light, the LLVM folks have also been reviewing their comparable changes...