Open-source News

Looking back on November there was the exciting release of new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X/3970X processors, Intel Core i9 10980XE Cascadelake-X also released, various new CPU vulnerabilities were disclosed, Linux gaming performance continued getting better with Mesa, the Linux 5.4 got buttoned up and released with its many new features, and other open-source milestones achieved. And there's a new Phoronix worker in-training...

Ice Lake, Threadripper, New CPU Vulnerabilities + Linux 5.4 Release Dominated November  Phoronix

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) improvements were sent in earlier this week for the Linux 5.5 kernel and they appear to be busier than usual on the x86 (Intel / AMD) side for the open-source virtualization stack...

KVM Virtualization Updates For Linux 5.5 Are Particularly Busy On The AMD/Intel Side  Phoronix

When the Raspberry Pi 4 launched earlier this year it was quickly realized active cooling was almost required if wanting to run the quad-core Cortex-A72 SoC at full performance without thermal throttling. Fortunately, the latest Raspberry Pi 4 firmware has improved the thermal/power behavior to lessen the need for extra cooling although it's still recommended for achieving peak performance potential out of this popular low-cost ARM SBC...

With the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X benchmarks on Windows 10 and Linux, Ubuntu 19.10 and other common distributions were just ~2% faster than the Microsoft OS and Clear Linux was just ~10% faster, based on 80+ benchmarks carried out. Those margins are much closer than we have seen with past iterations of Threadripper, but is that due to the Zen 2 microarchitecture and the improved topology of the new Threadripper CPUs or due to Microsoft's scheduler changes and other software improvements made in Windows 10 November 2019 Update? Here are some benchmarks...

Threadripper 3970X Performing Better On Windows Relative To Linux - Thanks To Microsoft Or Zen 2?  Phoronix

The HID area of the kernel is always eventful when it comes to improving the input device support for newer hardware. With Linux 5.5 the HID story means a new Logitech driver and other enhancements...

With LibreOffice 6.4 branched ahead of its release next year, feature development is open on what will be the next follow-on release for later in 2020. And this week one big underlying code change was merged... Using Skia for drawing the interface in an effort to ultimately replace the Cairo usage...

Built off yesterday's release of Wine 4.21 is now a new Wine-Staging release that continues shipping over 800 patches on top of upstream Wine for offering an experimental/testing blend that often works out much better for gaming on Linux...

Windows 10 Clone On The Menu As Hackers’ Favorite Hacking Tool Gets Update  Forbes

Struggling with what gifts to give the young person in your life this holiday season? Here are my top picks for open source presents that will spark creativity and inspire for years to come.

Hummingbird Robotics Kit

read more

Sent in on Thursday were the platform-drivers-x86 updates targeting the Linux 5.5 kernel...

How to install the Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop environment on Ubuntu  H2S Media

Greg Kroah-Hartman sent in the char/misc changes earlier this week and were already merged for Linux 5.5...

The "Catch-All" Driver Subsystem Changes Sent In For Linux 5.5  Phoronix

The Rust-based "rav1e" AV1 video encoder continues picking up performance optimizations...

USB Updates In Linux 5.5 Help Intel Ice Lake, NVIDIA Xavier + More - But No USB 4.0 Yet  Phoronix

USB Updates In Linux 5.5 Help Intel Ice Lake, NVIDIA Xavier + More - But No USB 4.0 Yet  Phoronix

Earlier this week as part of his series of pull requests, Greg Kroah-Hartman has submitted the USB subsystem updates for the in-development Linux 5.5 kernel...