Mesa 24.1-rc4 Backports NVK DRM Format Modifiers Support
The Mesa 24.1 stable release is nearing while out today is the fourth weekly release candidate. While the Intel and AMD Radeon graphics driver changes typically dominate new Mesa releases, Mesa 24.1-rc4 is headlined by a big change for the NVK open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver… ⌘ Read more

Intel TDX For Confidential VMs Causing Concern Among Fedora & Open-Source Advocates
One of the capabilities of newer Intel Xeon Scalable processors is support for Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) as a way of providing for confidential virtual machines. Intel TDX allows for “isolation, confidentiality, and integrity at the VM level” which is good from the security perspective but the dependence on signed binaries is causing mixed feelings within the Fedora camp at the broader open-source community… ⌘ Read more

The NTSYNC Driver For Wine/Proton Is “Broken” For Linux 6.10
While Linux 6.10 is poised to merge the initial NTSYNC driver for a Windows NT Synchronization Primitive driver that can help with faster Windows gaming performance under Wine/Proton (Steam Play), the driver isn’t complete. The initial patches have been in Greg Kroah-Hartman’s char-misc-next branch for several weeks to expose the NTSYNC character device, it isn’t the entire patch series. Greg has now marked the driver as “broken” for Linux 6.10… ⌘ Read more

ZLUDA Has Been Seeing New Activity For CUDA On AMD GPUs
Back in February I wrote about AMD having quietly funded the effort for a drop-in CUDA implementation for AMD GPUs built atop the ROCm library. This was an incarnation of ZLUDA that originally began as a CUDA implementation for Intel GPUs using oneAPI Level Zero. While AMD discontinued funding ZLUDA development earlier this year, this CUDA implementation for AMD GPUs is continuing to see some new code activity… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.10 Networking Adds New Intel Hardware Support, More WiFi 7 Enablement
The networking subsystem updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.10 kernel. As usual it’s a big update with some 90,083 new lines of code and 37,889 lines removed… ⌘ Read more

AMDVLK 2024.Q2.1 Driver Adds Phoenix 2 APU Support
It’s been the better part of two months since the last AMDVLK driver update while today the AMDVLK 2024.Q2.1 driver has been christened… ⌘ Read more

Arm Mali/Immortalis GPU Driver, New AMD Graphics IP & Lunar Lake Display In Linux 6.10
The big batch of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display driver updates for the Linux 6.10 merge window were sent out today that includes the new “Panthor” driver for newer ARM Mali/Immortalis graphics processors and the usual hearty assortment of Intel and AMD graphics driver changes… ⌘ Read more

Mir 2.17 Better Supports Hybrid Graphics & Other Wayland Enhancements
https://github.com/canonical/mirCanonical engineer Matthew Kosarek just released Mir 2.17 as the newest version of this open-source Wayland compositor that can be used for building Wayland-based shells and has shown some interesting potential with the likes of Miracle-WM and Miriway… ⌘ Read more

Sound Support For Intel Battlemage In Linux 6.10
Along with the various Intel Xe2 driver changes that are ongoing for the Intel Linux graphics driver stack, over in the sound subsystem the in-development Linux 6.10 kernel is bringing HDMI audio support for upcoming Intel Battlemage graphics cards… ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Is Doing More ARM64 Linux Testing Now That He Has A More Powerful System
Linux kernel and Git creator Linus Torvalds is known for his current use of an AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation as his main system after years of using Intel hardware. The past few years he’s also been doing more ARM64 testing now that he has an Apple MacBook using Apple Silicon that serves as a nice travel device and for routinely compiling new ARM64 Linux kernel builds. More recently, his ARM64 Linux testing has incr … ⌘ Read more

systemd 256-rc2 Released With A Few More Features
The first release candidate of systemd 256 came just under one month ago with new features like run0 as the new sudo alternative, a new “systemd-vpick” binary, importctl as another new tool, Zboot kernel support with systemd ukify, systemd-homed improvements, and much more. Systemd 256-rc2 is out this evening with a few more features and other fixes collected over the past several weeks… ⌘ Read more

Framework 13 AMD Laptop Seeing Experimental Coreboot Port
The Framework Laptops are some great systems with their upgradeable/modular design, friendly Linux support, both Intel and AMD options, the latest models making use of an open-source embedded controller, and nice build quality. The Framework Laptops have proven very popular with Linux/open-source enthusiasts but one of the recurring critiques has been the lack of Coreboot firmware support for these laptops as an alternative (or outright replacement) t … ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases Updated CPU Microcode For Fixing Three New Security Issues
Intel just published a new set of CPU microcode files for updating Alder lake and newer as well as Xeon Scalable 4th Gen and 5th Gen in order to address three security issues plus take care of various functional issues… ⌘ Read more

Benchmarking The First RISC-V Cloud Server: Scaleway EM-RV1 Performance
Scaleway by way of their Scaleway Labs group recently launched the Elastic Metal RV1 (EM-RV1) as the world’s first RISC-V servers available in the cloud. These RISC-V cloud servers are built around the T-Head 1520 SoC and are an interesting way to explore the RISC-V architecture and/or otherwise make use of RISC-V for CI/CD deployments or other testing purposes. In this article are some benchmarks showing the RISC-V EM-RV1 performance against … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Engineer Ports EXT2 File-System Driver To Rust
Back in late 2023 were Rust abstractions for the Linux kernel’s Virtual File-System (VFS) code. Those patches by Microsoft engineer Wedson Almeida Filho have now seen a second iteration posted… In addition to various improvements to the Rust VFS bindings, the new patches bring a work-in-progress EXT2 Rust file-system driver… ⌘ Read more

Debian Releases APT 2.9.3 With New Package Solver
Debian’s APT packaging tool is working its way toward the big APT 3.0 release. The APT 2.9 development series is underway and debuting last month was APT’s new (CLI) user interface with a columnar display, colored text, and other improvements for this widely-used tool on Debian-based environments. APT 2.9.3 is out today as the newest development release and new to this version is a new package solver… ⌘ Read more

Steam Deck IMU Support Submitted For Linux 6.10 Plus ASUS ROG Ally HID
The Human Interface Devices (HID) subsystem updates have been submitted for the newly-opened Linux 6.10 kernel merge window. Among the HID driver updates coming with Linux 6.10 are supporting the Steam Deck IMU motion sensors as well as HID coverage for the ASUS ROG Ally and ASUS ROG Z13 devices… ⌘ Read more

NVK Vulkan Driver Lands DRM Format Modifiers Support
After the 22 patches were under review for the past eight months, merged today is the NVK Vulkan driver support for the VK_EXT_image_drm_format_modifier extension for handling DRM format modifiers… ⌘ Read more

Zone Write Plugging Comes To Linux 6.10 For Better Performance
Along with the IO_uring improvements for Linux 6.10, the block subsystem changes have also been merged for this new kernel version… ⌘ Read more

Qualcomm Talks Up Their Linux Support For The Snapdragon X Elite
While much of the emphasis for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite laptop SoC has been around Windows on Arm PCs, Qualcomm has also been working to have upstream Linux support for this high-end SoC and everything is coming together for said support… ⌘ Read more

Manjaro 24.0 Released: Powered By Linux 6.9 & The Latest Desktops
Manjaro 24.0 has been released today as the newest version of this Arch Linux derived desktop OS. Manjaro 24.0 ships with the latest the newly-released Linux 6.9 kernel and a slew of other updated packages… ⌘ Read more

Rust 1.78 Upgrade For Linux 6.10, Dropping In-Tree “alloc” Fork To Save ~10k Lines
There’s another Rust upgrade coming for the Linux 6.10 kernel to bump the Rust version baseline required for building the Rust in-tree kernel components. This raising of the baseline will continue until a suitable minimum version is achieved where official Rust compiler “just works” well with the Rust’ed kernel bits. The Rust upgrade in Linux 6.10 also does away with its in-tree “alloc” fork for big code savings and simplifying maintena … ⌘ Read more

More ARM-Based Handheld Game Consoles Supported By Linux 6.10
The various ARM SoC/platform pull requests were already merged today by Linus Torvalds for the in-development Linux 6.10 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.10 Makes AES-XTS Disk/File Encryption Much Faster For Modern Intel/AMD CPUs
The work written about one month ago on Phoronix for much faster AES-XTS on modern Intel/AMD CPUs for speeding up disk and file encryption by as much as 155% with AMD Zen 4 CPUs has been submitted for Linux 6.10! As expected, this work providing new AES-XTS implementations for modern x86_64 processors is going into Linux 6.10 as part of the crypto subsystem updates… ⌘ Read more

Firefox 126 Available - Adds “Linux” To The Android User Agent String
Mozilla has pushed out its release images of the Firefox 126 web browser ahead of its official debut on Tuesday… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.10 Makes AES-XTS Disk/File Encryption Much Faster For Modern Intel/AMD CPUs
The work written about one month ago on Phoronix for much faster AES-XTS on modern Intel/AMD CPUs for speeding up disk and file encryption by as much as 155% with AMD Zen 4 CPUs has been submitted for Linux 6.10! As expected, this work providing new AES-XTS implementations for modern x86_64 processors is going into Linux 6.10 as part of the crypto subsystem updates… ⌘ Read more

Linux Foundation Launches The High Performance Software Foundation
Back at Supercomputing 23, the Linux Foundation announced their intent on forming the High Performance Software Foundation for helping to advance open-source software for high performance computing (HPC). The Linux Foundation is now using ISC 24 this week in Hamburg, Germany for announcing that the High Performance Software Foundation has launched… ⌘ Read more

x32 Shadow Stacks, Locking Optimizations, Intel VFM & Other x86 Changes For Linux 6.10
Today marks the first official day of the Linux 6.10 merge window. Among the horde of pull requests sent out today were the numerous x86 pull requests of material that’s been queuing up in TIP.git of which there are many changes benefiting both Intel and AMD… ⌘ Read more

GNU Linux-libre 6.9 Released: More Deblobbing, Fixes Intel Graphics On GuC-Less Systems
Building off last night’s release of Linux 6.9 stable, GNU Linux-libre 6.9-gnu has debuted as this kernel downstream that works on stripping out support for any drivers/hardware depending upon closed-source firmware/microcode and other alterations in the name of software freedom… ⌘ Read more

Intel-Powered Aurora Supercomputer Breaks The Exascale Barrier
Intel, HPE, and Argonne National Laboratory have announced at ISC High Performance 2024 that the Aurora Supercomputer has broken the Excascale barrier and is now the fastest AI supercomputer currently in existence… ⌘ Read more

Arch Linux Powered CachyOS Adds Bcachefs Installer Support
Arch Linux derived CachyOS is known for its aggressive performance optimizations and running well on modern hardware. It’s also leading when it comes to adopting other new Linux/open-source features. With this weekend’s May 2024 ISO update, CachyOS has rolled out initial support for installing to a root file-system based on Bcachefs… ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 14.1 Bringing Reproducibly Built Kernels, OpenZFS 2.2.4
Following last week’s release of FreeBSD 14.1 Beta 1, this weekend brought the second beta candidate right on time… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.9 Released With Faster Intel Core Ultra Performance, Larger Console Fonts Option
Linux 6.9 is out! Linux 6.9 has been released on time as the newest stable kernel version for rolling-release Linux distributions and other summer releases/updates. Linux 6.9 has a number of exciting features and improvements for those habitually updating to the newest version… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.10 Features Expected From The NTSYNC Driver To Performance Optimizations
Barring any last minute reservations by Linus Torvalds, Linux 6.9 stable should release later today. In turn the Linux 6.10 merge window will then open for the next two weeks and already some early pull requests have been submitted for this next kernel version. Here is a look at some of what to expect with the Linux 6.10 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.10 AMD P-State To Deliver Fixes, Better Support On Older Zen CPUs
The recent AMD P-State Linux driver patches for heterogeneous core CPU topology, Fast CPPC, and Core Performance Boost haven’t made it to the Linux power management’s “-next” branch ahead of the imminent Linux 6.10 cycle. Thus it looks like those features won’t be ready to make it for v6.10 unless by chance being deemed ready in the coming days and then sent in as part of a secondary set of merge window changes. However, some other AMD P-Stat … ⌘ Read more

Intel Arc Graphics Demonstrated Running On ARM With Ampere Altra
With the new Intel “Xe” Direct Rendering Manager kernel driver that’s been in development one of the touted benefits of the clean sheet driver design is that it would enable using Intel discrete GPUs on non-x86 CPU architectures. The long-used “i915” DRM kernel graphics driver has many x86’isms in the code-base built up over the many years of Intel integrated graphics that were only ever found within their x86/x86_64 processors. But now in the era … ⌘ Read more

AMD RDNA4 “GFX12” Support Merged For Mesa’s RadeonSI Driver
Following all of the GFX12 code and related IP landing within the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver as well as the LLVM AMDGPU shader compiler back-end and other code in enabling the next-generation of AMD Radeon graphics, the RadeonSI OpenGL driver support for RDNA4 (GFX12) was merged this Sunday into Mesa… ⌘ Read more

IO_uring Bringing Better Send Zero-Copy Performance With Linux 6.10
Linux I/O expert and subsystem maintainer Jens Axboe has submitted all of the IO_uring feature updates ahead of the imminent Linux 6.10 merge window… ⌘ Read more

Another AMD Zen 5 PCI ID Squeezing Into Linux 6.9
The Linux 6.9 kernel should debut as stable later today unless Linus Torvalds has second thoughts and decides to delay it by issuing a v6.9-rc8 kernel instead that would then push out the official release by an extra week. In any event, as a last-minute “x86/urgent” pull request is another Zen 5 PCI ID being added… ⌘ Read more

ReactOS “Open-Source Windows” Making Good Strides On SMP CPU Support
The ReactOS project has posted their latest newsletter that outlines progress made during the past two months. ReactOS continues working to be an open-source operating system that offers application and driver binary compatibility with Microsoft Windows to in effect serve as a “open-source Windows” albeit the hardware support and application support are still an ongoing affair… ⌘ Read more

Torvalds Voices Thoughts On Linux Mitigating Unexpected Arithmetic Overflows/Underflows
For those interested in some insightful Linux kernel mailing list reading this weekend, there’s been a vibrant discussion on the ability for the Linux kernel to mitigate unexpected arithmetic overflows/underflows/wraparounds… ⌘ Read more

KDE Making Good Progress On HDR, Better Gamescope Integration
KDE developer Xaver Hugl has written a third blog post outlining some of the latest HDR and color management improvements that have been readied for KDE’s KWin compositor as well as ongoing improvements to Valve’s Gamescope compositor… ⌘ Read more

KDE Making Good Progress On HDR, Better Gamescope Integration
KDE developer Xaver Hugl has written a third blog post outlining some of the latest HDR and color management improvements that have been readied for KDE’s KWin compositor as well as ongoing improvements to Valve’s Gamescope compositor… ⌘ Read more

Cloudflare Releases Pingora 0.2 For Building Fast & Reliable Networked Systems
Two years ago Cloudflare outlined how they began replacing Nginx with their own in-house creation, Pingora. Back in February of this year Cloudflare open-sourced Pingora and in April issued the maiden release of Pingora. Out today is Pingora 0.2 as the second release of this Rust framework that is already used in production by Cloudflare… ⌘ Read more

Rustls Can Now Work With Nginx Via New OpenSSL Compatibility Layer
Rustls is the modern TLS library written in the Rust programming language with a large emphasis on memory safety and security. Rustls is backed by Google, AWS, and others as well as being a recipient of Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund. The latest exciting milestone for the open-source project is that Rustls can now work with Nginx… ⌘ Read more

Wasmer 4.3 Released: WebAssembly Runtime 25% Faster On Cold Startups
Wasmer 4.3 is out as the newest version of this WebAssembly (WASM) runtime that supports WASIX, WASI, and EmScript execution. This cross-platform WASM runtime continues to be focused on driving lightweight containers that can run anywhere in a very secure manner… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6 Sees More Features Merged Ahead Of Plasma 6.1
KDE developers had another busy week as more features were merged ahead of next month’s Plasma 6.1 release… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA’s Open GPU Linux Kernel Driver Will Soon Be The Default For Turing & Newer GPUs
While we are all waiting for the NVIDIA R555 series Linux driver beta that is expected to debut as soon as next week based on prior information with Wayland improvements (explicit sync) and more, with the NVIDIA R560 series Linux driver successor is a very interesting change: NVIDIA is planning on defaulting to using their open-source GPU kernel driver by default for GeForce RTX 2000 “Turing” GPUs and newer… ⌘ Read more

AMD Aims For AMF In FFmpeg, Questioned Over Vulkan Video Commitment
AMD last week sent out a set of patches to enhance the open-source FFmpeg multimedia library with integration around the AMD Advanced Media Framework (AMF). The AMF SDK allows for “optimal” access to AMD GPUs for multimedia processing but this patch series questioned the need in an era of Vulkan Video APIs beginning to see adoption… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.10 Adding TPM Bus Encryption & Integrity Protection
Linux 6.10 is introducing support for Trusted Platform Module (TPM2) encryption and integrity protections to prevent active/passive interposers from compromising them. This follows a recent security demonstration of TPM key recovery from Microsoft Windows BitLocker being demonstrated. TPM sniffing attacks have also been demonstrated against Linux systems too, thus the additional protections be made with Linux 6.10 to better secure TPM2 modules… ⌘ Read more