Links 18/11/2013: Linux (Kernel) News Roundup
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2013-11-18 14:37:53 UTC
- Modified: 2013-11-18 14:37:53 UTC
Recruitment
-
The foundation thinks that a natural way of promoting the participation of younger people in the Linux kernel development is to reach out to colleges and universities to host training activities where students and faculty learn the ropes of how to contribute to the kernel.
Version 3.13
-
There's many exciting Linux 3.13 kernel features already, but we have another one to talk about today. In the input subsystem update for 3.13, support for the Neonode zForce has been added, an interesting touch-screen technology based on infrared light fields.
-
The Kernel-based Virtual Machine updates for the Linux 3.13 kernel were filed today and includes a fair amount of improvements for virtualization on PowerPC hardware, but there's also some x86 improvements too.
-
While the merge window for the Linux 3.13 kernel isn't even over yet, this next major kernel update is already looking to be rather exciting with a number of new features.
-
For those in need of a high-performance specially-optimized file-system for flash storage devices, the F2FS file-system developed at Samsung has seen more "major enhancements" queued up for the Linux 3.13 kernel.
-
The merge window hasn't even officially opened yet on the Linux 3.13 kernel but it's already super exciting and I can't wait for the new code to start hitting mainline and to benchmark these massive changes to the Linux kernel. Here's just a few things to expect so far but it's already gearing up to be a super exciting release and perhaps the best of 2013.
More Development
-
AMD has just published a new set of Linux kernel patches, revealing Linux support for a Cryptographic Coprocessor (AMD CCP).
-
The btrfs-progs user-space component to the Btrfs file-system has seen a number of commits in recent weeks. Beyond lots of code improvements and bug-fixes, the default meta-data block size was changed for the Btrfs mkfs command.
Events
-
The 3.12 Linux kernel release this week brought with it many new features including multi-threaded RAID5 support in the MD subsystem, the addition of render nodes, and TSO sizing.
-
The Linux Foundation is preparing to host its third LinuxCon Europe and this year for the first time will also host CloudOpen in Europe. The combination of the two events along with a variety of other co-located events taking place next week represents the largest gathering of Linux and open cloud professionals in Europe. From KVM Forum & oVirt Workshop to Xen Project Developer Summit and Yocto Developer Day to the Open Compute Engineering Workshop, there is something for everyone.
-
Linux Foundation Training scholarship winner Abdelghani Ouchabane is a senior software developer at eZono, a medical device startup in Germany that uses Linux to build its software and systems. He's worked on a range of Linux projects over the past five years in this job, including kernel module and driver configuration, system and server configuration, and networking, he said. He's also contributed to many open source projects including Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu, Meego, Tizen and Debian.
Graphics Stack
-
Yesterday there was news that OpenACC 2.0 parallel programming support was coming to GCC complete with GPU acceleration support for NVIDIA GPUs. While it was exciting on the surface, it appears that this work may be poisonous and could have a very tough time making it upstream.
The news yesterday was about Oak Ridge, Mentor Graphics, and NVIDIA working to add OpenACC 2.0 parallel programming support to the GCC compiler for C and Fortran. GCC right now doesn't have any support for OpenACC, even the older versions of the specification, and the patches thus far haven't fully exploited the GPU potential besides converting OpenACC to OpenCL or another implementation that just runs OpenACC over OpenMP on the CPU. Mentor Graphics is now responsible for bringing OpenACC 2.0 with NVIDIA GPU support to the GNU Compiler Collection.
-
The xf86-video-freedreno X.Org driver for providing support for Qualcomm's Adreno/Snapdragon graphics hardware has reached version 1.0 in its first stable release.
-
After the support has been within Wayland's Weston reference compositor for several months, developers have now added sub-surfaces support to the Wayland core protocol itself. Wayland sub-surfaces can make for efficient use of video players and windowed OpenGL games on Wayland.
-
Interesting in the Wayland camp this week has been lots of discussions about the XDG-Shell proposal but besides that, a patch-set just appeared that finally adds alt-tab support to Wayland's Weston compositor and also updates the exposay feature.
-
As part of the recent Radeon Rx 200 series and Hawaii GPU launch, AMD also unveiled Mantle as a new graphics rendering API to compete with OpenGL and Direct3D. AMD claims Mantle is easier, faster, and all-around better than OpenGL for game engines and other purposes. This week AMD has renewed their push that they want to see Mantle on Linux and other platforms.
-
The xf86-video-intel 3.0 driver is still on the way and Intel OTC's Chris Wilson has put out today its latest development release that has stability fixes, including further TearFree updates.
-
If you are after a low-end graphics card for use on Linux, up for review today is the Zotac GeForce GT 610 Synergy 1GB graphics card that sells for less than $50 USD. The results in this Linux hardware review compare the GT 610 to a range of other AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards using the proprietary drivers under Ubuntu Linux. Even if you're not interested in the GT 610, this article makes for a nice 12-way Linux graphics card comparison with the very latest AMD/NVIDIA GPU drivers.
-
If you're curious about the state of the Qt5-powered Hawaii Desktop running natively on Wayland, a new video has been uploaded that nicely shows off this new Linux desktop alternative that's designed around Wayland.
Benchmarks
-
For your viewing pleasure today is a 13-way AMD Radeon graphics card comparison when testing out the open-source Radeon Gallium3D drivers on the wide spectrum of ATI/AMD GPUs while looking at the performance for Valve's Source Engine with Counter-Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2. Given the imminent arrival of Steam Machines and SteamOS to push Linux gaming into its long-awaited spotlight, is AMD's open-source Linux graphics driver capable of delivering a reasonable level of performance?For your viewing pleasure today is a 13-way AMD Radeon graphics card comparison when testing out the open-source Radeon Gallium3D drivers on the wide spectrum of ATI/AMD GPUs while looking at the performance for Valve's Source Engine with Counter-Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2. Given the imminent arrival of Steam Machines and SteamOS to push Linux gaming into its long-awaited spotlight, is AMD's open-source Linux graphics driver capable of delivering a reasonable level of performance?
-
Last week AMD released the Radeon R9 290 "Hawaii" graphics card. The R9 290 is a cut-down R9 290X and sells for just $399 USD. Here are the first Linux benchmarks of the AMD R9 290 using Ubuntu 13.10!
-
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4, Amazon Linux AMI 2013.09, Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS, Ubuntu 13.10, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 have been pitted against each other in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and the Linux performance benchmark results are now available.
-
This testing isn't too different from other open vs. closed-source GPU driver benchmarks run recently on Phoronix but is a fresh look and with some different tests. The Catalyst driver in use was the latest publicly available (Catalyst 13.11 Beta 6 - OpenGL 4.3.12614 - fglrx 13.25.5) and the open-source version was Mesa 10.0-devel with an xf86-video-ati Git snapshot. The Linux 3.12 kernel was used throughout all testing and DPM was enabled for the Radeon Linux driver.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Links 10/06/2025: Jaws at 50 and US Democracy Crushed Very Rapidly (Martial Law Seems Imminent)
- Links for the day
- Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
- "Tragedy or comedy?"
- Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
- Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
- Live as You Preach
- technology is fast becoming dysphoric
-
- Links 10/06/2025: Apple Hype and Physical Attacks on Bloggers
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 10/06/2025: Loon Lake, Farming, and Forth
- Links for the day
- If 'Microsoft v Techrights' is Dealt With by a 'Microsoft Court' (or a Court Outsourced to Microsoft)
- More on that later
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
- Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
- If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
- Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
- Links for the day
- Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
- Links for the day
- Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
- Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
- BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
- SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
- Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
- Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
- They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
- They didn't take good lawyers
- Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
- Links for the day
- Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
- it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
- Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
- Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
- Links for the day
- Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
- Links for the day
- Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
- Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
- This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
- The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
- Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
- perpetrators of harassment
- For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
- "Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
- There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
- What many IRC users lost sight of
- Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
- In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
- GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
- Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
- Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
- From a Microsoft media operative
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
- Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
- Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
- The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
- So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
- When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
- Integrity matters
- "Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
- We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
- Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
- We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year