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27 March

Pop!_OS Upgrades To The Linux 6.8 Kernel
Pop!_OS Upgrades To The Linux 6.8 Kernel
27 March 05:00 PM EDT - Operating Systems - Pop OS + Linux 6.8 - 6 Comments

Besides its desktop-level customizations, further differentiating System76's Pop!_OS Linux distribution from its Ubuntu LTS package base is the tendency to roll down newer versions of the upstream Linux kernel once validated across System76's portfolio of laptops and desktops. The latest on that front is Pop!_OS now shipping with the fresh Linux 6.8 stable series.

SDL3 Will Keep Wayland Default At Least For The Time Being
SDL3 Will Keep Wayland Default At Least For The Time Being
27 March 12:13 PM EDT - Linux Gaming - SDL 3.0 - 33 Comments

Following several days of discussions from both sides of the table over whether SDL 3.0 should revert its Wayland over X11 preference in light of some aspects of the Wayland ecosystem support not being in good shape, for now at least SDL 3.0 is sticking to the Wayland support by default. It may be revisited though closer to release to see how the upstream support is for users of this hardware/software abstraction library widely used by cross-platform games.

Canonical Continues Exploring Ubuntu x86-64-v3 Images - Now In Microsoft's Cloud
Canonical Continues Exploring Ubuntu x86-64-v3 Images - Now In Microsoft's Cloud
27 March 11:29 AM EDT - Ubuntu - Now On Microsoft Azure - 2 Comments

Ubuntu maker Canonical has spent the past several months exploring Ubuntu x86-64-v3 based images for leveraging the x86_64 micro-architecture feature level capabilities to target the level embracing AVX/AVX2, FMA, BMI2, and other instructions supported largely since Intel Haswell and AMD Excavator era processors. As shown in benchmarks Ubuntu x86-64-v3 builds can deliver better performance for the AMD/Intel systems of the past number of years. Canonical's latest foray in this area is offering up Microsoft Azure images that are tailored for x86-64-v3.

Blender 4.1 Benchmarks Confirm Even Faster CPU Render Times Under Linux
Blender 4.1 Benchmarks Confirm Even Faster CPU Render Times Under Linux
27 March 10:38 AM EDT - Free Software - Blender 4.1 Performance - 7 Comments

Blender has long enjoyed faster CPU rendering under Linux compared to using Microsoft Windows. Across many different processors over the years consistently we see faster Linux CPU render performance than under Windows, though that's typically the case for most renderers. With yesterday's release of Blender 4.1, there is even faster Linux CPU render speeds. Here are some initial Blender 4.0 vs. 4.1 benchmarks.

TornadoVM v1.0.3 OpenJDK/GraalVM Plug-In For Java Heterogeneous Hardware Support
TornadoVM v1.0.3 OpenJDK/GraalVM Plug-In For Java Heterogeneous Hardware Support
27 March 05:57 AM EDT - Programming - TornadoVM 1.0.3 - 2 Comments

TornadoVM is the OpenJDK and GraalVM plug-in that opens up the Java programming language to heterogeneous hardware support by allowing the easy targeting of Java code to TornadoVM targets including OpenCL, NVIDIA PTX, and SPIR-V -- in addition to CPUs. With the SPIR-V and OpenCL support in turn this means Java can run not only on GPUs but also some FPGAs and other devices.

26 March

Linux Enabling Shadow Stack Support For x32
Linux Enabling Shadow Stack Support For x32
26 March 06:43 AM EDT - Linux Kernel - x32 Shadow Stacks - 3 Comments

Back in Linux 6.6 the Shadow Stack support was finally merged as part of Intel's Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET). This years-in-the-making effort allows for better defending against ROP attacks for newer generations of Intel processors. For Linux 6.10, Shadow Stack support is being extended to x32.

Panthor DRM Driver Queued For Linux 6.10 To Support Newer Arm Mali GPUs
Panthor DRM Driver Queued For Linux 6.10 To Support Newer Arm Mali GPUs
26 March 06:20 AM EDT - Arm - Panthor Driver - 1 Comment

The open-source Panthor DRM driver for supporting newer Arm Mali GPUs was queued in drm-misc-next at the start of March ahead of the Linux 6.9 merge window. It ultimately though didn't see a drm-misc-next pull to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.9 merge window and thus being held off until the Linux 6.10 cycle. This week though that drm-misc-next submission to DRM-Next took place as that driver and other changes begin queuing for Linux 6.10.

25 March

Mesa 24.1 Merges AMD Radeon VPE 1.1 Engine Support
Mesa 24.1 Merges AMD Radeon VPE 1.1 Engine Support
25 March 10:07 AM EDT - Radeon - VPE 1.1 - 2 Comments

AMD open-source Linux driver patches posted last summer enabled the new "VPE" IP block as a general purpose copy engine for future AMD GPUs. This VPE block might premiere in the upcoming AMD RDNA3.5 refresh (RDNA3+) integrated graphics but in any event AMD is already working on the incrementally improved VPE 1.1 IP with that now being supported by the Mesa 24.1 RadeonSI driver code.

Tiny Corp Changes Course Yet Again With Plans To Offer AMD Radeon GPUs
Tiny Corp Changes Course Yet Again With Plans To Offer AMD Radeon GPUs
25 March 08:46 AM EDT - Radeon - Tinybox Red Green - 62 Comments

It was just last week that Tiny Corp put their AMD Radeon graphics powered compute boxes "on hold" after being frustrated with the lack of select firmware source code and ultimately hitting various bugs. This wasn't the first time they had put their AMD Radeon graphics plans on-hold or dismissed it outright. With the start of the new week now comes plans to re-introduce an AMD Radeon graphics option for their compute boxes alongside their recently announced NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 compute rigs.

Intel NPU Linux Driver 1.2 Released
Intel NPU Linux Driver 1.2 Released
25 March 06:53 AM EDT - Intel - Intel NPU Linux Driver - 1 Comment

Intel today published a new version of its NPU Linux driver user-space components that goes along with their iVPU accelerator kernel driver for enabling the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) found within their latest Meteor Lake systems.

XWayland-Run 0.0.3 Adds Support For KDE's KWin
XWayland-Run 0.0.3 Adds Support For KDE's KWin
25 March 06:43 AM EDT - Wayland - xwayland-run - 9 Comments

Since last year Red Hat engineers have been developing xwayland-run and wlheadless-run for spawning X11 clients within its own dedicated XWayland rootful instance and for running a Wayland client on a set of supported Wayland headless compositors, respectively. The intent is on improving the Wayland headless experience as well as being able to get classic X11 sessions up and running via rootful XWayland. Out today is the XWayland-Run v0.0.3 release.

24 March

Linux 6.9 Improves Speakup - Its In-Kernel Speech Synthesizer
24 March 10:10 AM EDT - Multimedia - /dev/synthu - 7 Comments

The speakup driver that's long existed within the Linux kernel is a speech synthesizer that can interface with various synthesizer hardware and from user-space software can interface with /dev/synth for submitting data to the synthesizer. With Linux 6.9 the speakup driver is seeing two useful improvements.

Linux 6.9 Sees Further Security Hardening
24 March 06:58 AM EDT - Linux Security - Linux 6.9 - 5 Comments

With security concerns at all-time highs in the industry, Linux 6.9 is seeing yet more work to beef up its security hardening with various additional safety checks and other compile-time defenses for ensuring security best practices.

23 March

DIRT 5 Now Runs On Intel Arc Graphics Under Linux With Driver Workaround
23 March 04:05 PM EDT - Intel - DIRT 5 - 18 Comments

The DIRT 5 racing game was one of the titles that hadn't worked on Intel graphics under Linux due to the sparse memory support for the ANV Vulkan driver. But with sparse support now enabled, the game was crashing at launch. But now a workaround is in place to allow Intel's Mesa 24.1 Vulkan driver to work with DIRT 5.

Rust Bindings Posted For KMS Drivers, VKMS Ported To Rust
23 March 06:57 AM EDT - Linux Kernel - RVKMS - 29 Comments

So far when it comes to Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) / Kernel Mode-Setting (KMS) display drivers for Linux, there are Rust efforts underway for the Apple Silicon kernel graphics driver with the Asahi Linux project as well as the new Nova effort for a modern open-source NVIDIA kernel driver from Red Hat. Also now out from Red Hat is posting the Rust bindings for KMS to review plus porting the existing Virtual KMS driver over to Rust as the "RVKMS" driver.

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