Phoronix

Linux 5.9-rc1 is set to be released this evening in marking the end of the two-week long merge window where new features are introduced for the cycle.

Today marks twenty-seven years since the late Ian Murdock started Debian as one of the original Linux distributions. It was on 16 August 1993 when Ian Murdock started this distribution while it wasn't until September when he released the first version. Debian remains one of the oldest Linux-based distributions / operating systems. Over the years Debian has gone on to power numerous other Linux distributions like Ubuntu and SteamOS while continuing to experience much success in its own right as well...

While LibreOffice 7.0 was just released earlier this month, with the code branching having already happened earlier this summer, there are a number of changes already accumulating in the code-base for LibreOffice 7.1...

SQLite 3.33 is out as the latest update to this widely-used, embed-friendly database library used by countless applications and other software...

Back in June after Intel first published the Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) specification, the open-source/Linux patches were quick to come by their large software team. That work has continued over the summer in ensuring the Linux ecosystem and developers are ready for Intel AMX programming come next year with Sapphire Rapids...

Picolibc is a newer C library implementation written by longtime free software developer Keith Packard with a focus on being lightweight for embedded systems. Last year marked the release of Picolibc 1.0 while work on it hasn't let up...

With the mainline NTFS driver in the Linux kernel offering read-only support for this widely-used Microsoft file-system and the more popular "ntfs-3g" driver being FUSE-based, Paragon Software is looking to mainline their read-write driver into the mainline kernel tree as a significant improvement over the existing NTFS kernel driver. But in the current state it's not clear if the driver will be accepted...

GNOME 3.37.90 has been released this weekend to serve as the beta of the upcoming GNOME 3.38 desktop release...

Merged last week to Linux 5.9 were the main set of power management updates while hitting the kernel now are some last minute power-related changes...

System76 has been on a spree of interesting hardware launches this year and their next one is a new Bonobo WS ultra high-end laptop...

Following the release yesterday of Wine 5.15, Wine-Staging 5.15 is out this morning and is coming in slightly smaller as a result of the XACT Engine work being upstreamed...

KDE developers remain very busy tacking new features onto Plasma 5.20 and other improvements for polishing their desktop...

As reported a few days ago the NFS server with Linux 5.9 saw user xattr support finally merged for user-extended attributes as defined by RFC 8276. The NFS client changes have now been sent in for this kernel and include the user xattr support along with other changes...

While RISC-V is flourishing when it comes to this open-source CPU architecture, the related OpenRISC architecture is still advancing but not seeing as much hardware efforts around it. In any case, the Linux kernel support continues improving for OpenRISC and with Linux 5.9 are more improvements...

Wine 5.15 is out as the latest bi-weekly development snapshot for this program allowing Windows games/applications to generally run quite gracefully on Linux and other platforms...

Intel has published a whitepaper on their new TDX "Trust Domain Extensions" technology for better securing virtual machines...

Back in Linux 5.4 Xen 32-bit PV guest support was deprecated while now for Linux 5.9 it's set to be removed entirely. Last year's deprecation comes with the 32-bit usage dwindling in general but PVH being preferred to PV, Meltdown mitigations not being present, and the code not seeing much activity. Now for Linux 5.9 that support is being gutted...

Over the months ahead with Apple preparing future desktops/laptops with their in-house Apple silicon built on the ARM 64-bit architecture, Wine developers are beginning to eye how to support these future 64-bit ARM systems with macOS Big Sur...

Stemming from the recent discussions over NVIDIA NetGPU code that relied on another shim for interfacing between NVIDIA's proprietary driver and the open-source kernel code, a new patch is on the way for Linux 5.9 to fight back against such efforts...

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is among the early rolling-release distributions now shipping a Linux 5.8-based kernel by default...

Following last week's release of Ubuntu 20.04.1, the prior Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 Long Term Support series are also seeing new releases...

It's been nearly three months without a new DXVK release for mapping Direct3D 9/10/11 atop the Vulkan API while finally today there is a big feature release out...

The popular, cross-platform Unity game engine is planning for a very exciting 2021...

KDE has shipped their latest collection of applications with newest feature updates...

This week Intel held their 2020 Architecture Day, albeit virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of interesting technical information was shared on both the hardware and software sides. Here are some of the interesting highlights.

At Intel's Architecture Day this week the company was talking about work on their new Windows graphics driver that is being timed for Xe but supporting existing generations of hardware as well. One of the interesting takeaways was seeing the Windows driver is now using the open-source "IGC" back-end...

Recently I wrote about it looking like oneAPI 1.0 was lining up and now there is further confirmation of the first production release of this Intel software collection indeed coming this year...

The Qt Company today issued the first release candidate of their forthcoming Qt Creator 4.13 integrated development environment as well as a beta of their Qt Design Studio 1.6...

Of various criticisms around FUSE for implementing file-systems in user-space, one of the most prolific issues is around the performance generally being much lower than a proper file-system kernel driver. But with the FUSE passthrough functionality that continue to be worked on, there is the potential for much better FUSE file-system performance...

Following all of the feature updates to the open-source GPU/DRM drivers for Linux 5.9 that included a lot of new material, the first batch of fixes have now been sent in for mainline in addressing early fallout from these many changes...

The second weekly release candidate of the forthcoming Mesa 20.2 is now available for testing...

Sent in last week for the Linux 5.9 kernel merge window were the initial batch of changes to the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) while today some additional interesting changes were sent out...

Ubuntu developers are looking at using Intel IWD as the iNET wireless daemon to potentially replace WPA_Supplicant for offering a better WiFi experience...

AMD has released their Radeon Pro Software for Enterprise 20.Q3 driver as their quarterly update to this enterprise-rated driver for their professional/workstation graphics offerings. In step with the new Windows driver release is also the 20.Q3 packaged Linux driver for enterprise distributions including RHEL/CentOS 8.1, RHEL/CentOS 7.8, Ubuntu 18.04.4, and SUSE SLED/SLES 15...

While Mesa 20.2 isn't even releasing for a few weeks, Mesa 20.3 is already seeing new feature work that will debut next quarter...

QEMU 5.1 is now available for this important piece of the open-source Linux virtualization stack...

It was just one week ago that LibreOffice 7.0 was released and it has already seen around a half-million downloads for this leading open-source, cross-platform office suite...

With the recently released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2, the Flatpak sandboxing and app distribution tech is ready to shine and there is also the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux Flatpak runtime...

For a while now Intel has been quietly been working on "mOS" as the "multi-OS" that is a modified version of the Linux kernel that in turn is running lightweight kernels for high-performance computing purposes...

If you are more of an artistic type than programmer, there still is plenty of valuable assistance that can be provided to free software projects... The latest call for help is that of the Debian project in looking for the Debian 11 "Bullseye" desktop artwork...

Go 1.15 is out as a rather significant update to this popular, modern programming language...

Last month was the proposal for Fedora to make DXVK their default back-end for Direct3D 9/10/11 usage with their packaged Wine build rather than WineD3D. That's now been approved for Fedora 33!..

Since leaving stealth last year and hiring some prominent Linux/open-source veterans to complement their ARM processor design experts, we have been quite eager to hear more about this latest start-up aiming to deliver compelling ARM server products. Today they shared some early details on their initial "Phoenix" processor that is coming within their "Orion" SoC...

It is Intel's August 2020 disclosure day with 18 new advisories being issued for covering 52 vulnerabilities...

Mozilla today announced they are laying off around 250 of their employees with Mozilla Corporation and closing up their Taipei, Taiwan operations...

There are a few changes worth mentioning out of the VirtIO updates submitted today for the Linux 5.9 kernel...

For Intel NVDIMMs like DC Persistent Memory there is support on the way with Linux 5.9 to support firmware updates to the non-volatile memory device without the need for a system reboot...

The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) changes have been sent in for the in-development Linux 5.9 kernel...

For those wanting to experiment with an actively-maintained BSD-powered, desktop-focused operating system, GhostBSD remains a great choice powered off FreeBSD...

The Document Foundation that is behind the cross-platform LibreOffice open-source office suite has published their 2019 annual report...