Phoronix

KDE developers remain very busy and productive even with everything going on in the world. This week the KDE desktop enjoyed many more fixes and improvements across the board...

Wine 7.4 is out today as the newest bi-weekly development snapshot of this open-source software for enjoying Windows games and applications on Linux and other operating systems...

Made public this week was the Spectre-BHB / BHI vulnerability and while only Intel and Arm processors are currently believed to be impacted, in the course of that research the folks at VUSec discovered AMD's current Retpoline strategy for Spectre V2 mitigations is not adequate. This has led to a change in behavior for AMD processors and is already applied to the Linux kernel. Here is a look at what it means for desktop and server performance due to the change in return trampoline handling.

For AMD Navi "RDNA1" GPUs and newer having at least Video Core Next 2.0 (VCN2) for the video coding block, a new feature was merged today into Mesa 22.1-devel for the open-source AMD video acceleration stack...

Linux 5.17 will hopefully be released on Sunday and with that next kernel there are many exciting features in tow. But for as great as Linux 5.17 is, there are many features I am already eager for with Linux 5.18. Here is an early look at a number of the changes expected in this next kernel version...

In addition to releasing FreeBSD 13.1-BETA1, the FreeBSD project also published its Q4'2021 status report to recap all of the open-source activities achieved for this BSD operating system during the past quarter...

Back in 2019 that seems like an eternity ago with all that's gone on in the world, the Linux kernel deprecated a.out support. This executable / object code / shared library file format was used prior to the dominance of ELF but is seldom if ever used today. There have been pending patches to finally remove a.out from the kernel while the plan now is to stop building it on Alpha and Motorola 68000 targets to see if anyone notices/cares...

Out today is the first beta release of the upcoming FreeBSD 13.1 operating system update...

OpenZFS 2.1.3 is out today as the latest version of this open-source ZFS file-system implementation compatible with modern Linux and FreeBSD systems...

Made public on Tuesday was BHI / Spectre-BHB as the newest offshoot from Spectre V2. There were Linux patches immediately posted for affected Intel and Arm processors while also making adjustments to AMD CPUs around its Retpoline handling. The VUSec security researchers that discovered BHI are recommending Retpolines be enabled for newer processors even those with hardware mitigations against Spectre V2, but that's that performance cost? Here are some initial benchmarks.

AMD posted this morning a new Linux kernel patch series for enabling a new feature for "upcoming processors" that is almost definitively for Zen 4, continuing their work in recent weeks around more open-source patches in preparing for their next-generation processors...

When Linus Torvalds gets motivated and behind kernel changes, they tend to happen more quickly, with the latest example being the switching from the C89 language standard to C11 (GNU11). That change is now expected early on for the Linux 5.18 merge window...

Assuming nothing major comes up in the next few days, the Linux 5.17 kernel is expected to be released on Sunday. While we have been covering Linux 5.17 kernel activity already for a while prior to the merge window even getting going, here is a convenient look at some of the most interesting changes to find in this new release...

A set of 13 patches were posted overnight for improving the Intel Linux kernel graphics driver's handling of the power-savings feature Display Refresh Rate Switching (DRRS) for laptops...

MorphOS as the AmigaOS-like operating system now in development for more than two decades and targeting PowerPC hardware is out with version 3.16 as its first major release in over a year...

Mesa 22.0 is out today as the quarterly feature update to this collection of open-source OpenGL and Vulkan graphics drivers used widely by Linux systems...

Since the release at the end of February of Valve's Steam Deck there has been numerous Phoronix readers wondering about the CPU performance of the Steam Deck's AMD APU in non-gaming workloads and just how viable the Steam Deck could be for a converged device for desktop uses. Here is some commentary on that front and benchmark results.

Blender 3.1 is out today as the newest feature release to this incredibly powerful, open-source and cross-platform 3D modeling software...

As part of diversifying their supported range of Linux distributions since it was announced CentOS 8 would be going end-of-life, the popular cPanel commercial software package for easing the administration of Linux web server has added support for AlmaLinux and wit cPanel v102 is full support for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS...

Microsoft has laid out a proposal whereby they are hoping to contribute support for DirectX, the HLSL shading language, and Vulkan graphics support to the upstream LLVM/Clang compiler...

AMD continues recruiting more Linux engineers to join the company not only for their EPYC server processors given the dominance of Linux on the server/HPC front but also as part of their growing Linux client ambitions covering custom SoCs using Linux from Valve's Steam Deck to the Tesla in-vehicle infotainment system over to just running AMD Ryzen processors on Linux. This is good to see given AMD's traditionally much smaller Linux pool of talent compared to Intel's massive Linux/open-source engineering headcount...

One of many promising kernel patch series at the moment for enhancing Linux kernel performance is the multi-gen LRU framework (MGLRU) devised by Google engineers. They found the current Linux kernel page reclaim code is too expensive for CPU resources and can make poor eviction choices while MGLRU aims to yield better performance. These results are quite tantalizing and MGLRU is now up to its ninth revision...

Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT) as part of Intel's Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) is set to be supported as part of the upcoming Linux 5.18 kernel. Last night the IBT patch series has queued into TIP's x86/core ahead of the Linux 5.18 merge window...

PanVK as Panfrost's open-source Vulkan driver in Mesa for Arm Mali graphics hardware is seeing progress on handling compute shaders...

Godot 4.0 continues marching closer to its much anticipated release with today marking the fourth release candidate already for this open-source game engine...

Within minutes of the BHI speculative execution vulnerability going public, patches were merged into the mainline Linux kernel Git tree for mitigating this offshoot from Spectre V2. The Intel and Arm processors affected by BHI (also referred to as Spectre-BHB) have mitigation work plus a change also impacts AMD processors too...

Apple is at it again with further showing off the potential of their Arm-based Apple Silicon with today rolling out the M1 Ultra SoC...

The VUSec security researchers are today -- in cooperation with Intel -- disclosing another new speculative execution vulnerability... BHI is the name and it's an offshoot from Spectre V2...

Vulkan 1.3.207 is out as the latest routine update to this high performance graphics / compute API...

It's been well over two years since AMD introduced the Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series and subsequently introduced the Threadripper PRO 3000WX series as workstation-focused parts. Today AMD is introducing the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 WX Series as the first Zen 3 based Threadripper processors.

Back in 2019 the folks at CloudFlare announced BoringTun as a Rust-written WireGuard user-space implementation. Yesterday marked the first tagged release of BoringTun in the form of version 0.4...

Last week The Khronos Group introduced Vulkan SC 1.0 in providing safety-critical Vulkan support for allowing this modern graphics API to used in new areas requiring maximum safety requirements...

The Linux kernel support is looking to drop support for Renesas (Hitachi) H8/300 CPUs once again...

A new version of the high performance, open-source Mold linker is now available with more feature additions and performance optimizations...

The latest change to be proposed for the Fedora 37 release later this year is encouraging package maintainers to drop unused 32-bit x86 (i686) packages...

With SPECViewPerf 2020 finally released for Linux I was curious to see how AMD's open-source "RadeonSI" Gallium3D driver within Mesa would compare to the performance offered by AMD's proprietary OpenGL Linux driver. After all, that longstanding proprietary driver, which is distributed as part of their Radeon Software for Linux driver package, has code in common with their Windows OpenGL driver and has previously been talked up as the preferred choice for workstation customers. Well, the latest open-source driver stack was outright kicking mud at that legacy binary blob for SPECViewPerf 2020 as well as the ParaView workstation visualization software.

After a week delay in processing of the monthly Steam Survey data, the Steam Survey results for February 2022 are in! Yes, the much anticipated Steam Deck did begin shipping in February, but at the tail-end and in limited quantities, so don't expect any big surprises.....

Mozilla Firefox 98.0 binaries have hit the web today ahead of the formal release announcement tomorrow. There are various improvements in this latest monthly update to the Firefox web browser while its Wayland support for the Linux desktop remains ongoing...

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS will be carrying the patches so the GNOME desktop makes use of the on-demand triple buffering support when necessary in order to boost the GPU rendering performance in order to allow for a smoother desktop experience...

The Qt Company has made a public roadmap for the Qt6 tool-kit this year with some of the items they are planning to add/enhance and are ready to talk about at this time...

With the NVIDIA 510 series Linux driver back in January NVIDIA added AV1 video decode support to their Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) driver. Now finally out is libvdpau 1.5 as the adjoining open-source VDPAU library update...

Barring any last minute issues the Linux 5.17 stable kernel is expected to be out next Sunday...

Following the recent releases of DXVK 1.10 and VKD3D-Proton 2.6 this past week, DXVK-NVAPI 0.5.3 is out this Sunday as the newest update to this library providing NVIDIA driver API "NVAPI" integration around DXVK/VKD3D-Proton for Windows games running on Linux by way of Steam Play (Proton)...

Since last month's Steam Deck launch a few Phoronix readers have been asking about USB-C hubs for expanding connectivity with this handheld Linux-powered gaming console. Pretty much any reliable USB-C hub should do, while for my purposes the past month I've been using the Anker USB-C Hub...

FEX-Emu is the open-source project striving for speedy x86/x86_64 binaries on AArch64 with similar objectives to Box86/Box64. FEX-Emu is working toward allowing Steam and other x86_64 Linux games to work on 64-bit Arm hardware and achieving some early success. Out today is FEX-Emu 2203 as the latest step in that direction...

Back in 2017 the Mesa open-source OpenGL driver for Broadcom VC5 hardware most notably used by the Raspberry Pi 4 aimed to enable anisotropic filtering (AF). However, that patch wasn't fully hooked up correctly and now this past week should be in good shape...

The open-source Tow-Boot project has been in development now for about one year as a "user-friendly" distribution of the U-Boot bootloader...

Version 7.6 of the digiKam open-source photo management software is now available with a number of enhancements...

Beyond all their timely Linux kernel contributions surrounding their processors and graphics hardware, Intel continues well with ensuring network adapters, Bluetooth, and other ASICs are generally well supported on Linux ahead of launch. With Linux 5.18 there is now support for "Madison peak" as another yet-to-be-announced Bluetooth chip...

Going back to the original Razer Copperhead mouse in 2005, I've tested many different Razer mice over the years and have exclusively used Razer mice on my main production system for basically as long. This week the scrollwheel physically broke on a Razer DeathAdder mouse I've used the past few years so quickly ordered a replacement, which sadly turned out to be the worst Razer mouse I've personally ever used, and replaced it a day later...