Kernel Core

• Stable kernels 3.12.9 and 3.10.28





• Radeon DRM Gets A Few More Fixes For Linux 3.14

  Another pull request was already submitted of AMD Radeon DRM graphics driver changes queued up for the Linux 3.14 kernel merge window with the DRM pull.
  
  Linux 3.14 Radeon DRM changes were already submitted to drm-next, which includes improved DRM support and various other changes, particularly for the newer AMD GPUs. This latest Radeon DRM pull that was sent in today provides additional fixes.





• Linux Kernel 3.13 Gets Its First Update

  The latest version of this kernel branch has received its first update, but it's a small one with just a few changes and fixes. This is normal for a new kernel, and subsequent versions should pick up the pace.





• OpenDaylight Developer Spotlight: Hugo Trippaers





• Linux Kernel Block Maintainer Joins Facebook

  Just a matter of weeks after the lead Btrfs file-system developers joined Facebook after leaving the Fusion-io data storage company, another key Linux kernel developer has left his post at Fusion-io to join the social network company.





• Systemd's Networkd Now Supports Bonding

  Back in November the networkd service gained support for network bridging and now with the latest code rework there is network bonding support. Network bonding is combining two or more network adapters for network redundancy or greater throughput.





• The Linux 3.14 Kernel Already Has Many Exciting Features





• Xen PVH Is Landing For The Linux 3.14 Kernel





• Linux 3.14 To Support EFI Kexec Capability





• [GIT PULL 0/6] ARM: SoC changes for Linux 3.14

  Here are the main branches for arm-soc for the 3.14 merge window. We'll have a few more patches towards the end, but this is the bulk of it.





• Crypto Update for Linux 3.14

  * Improved crypto_memneq helper. * Use cyprto_memneq in arch-specific crypto code. * Replaced orphaned DCP driver with Freescale MXS DCP driver. * Added AVX/AVX2 version of AESNI-GCM encode and decode. * Added AMD Cryptographic Coprocessor (CCP) driver. * Misc fixes.
  
  





• Open Source Libferris: Chasing the "Everything is a File System" Dream

  The open source libferris project is a virtual file system that aims to provide a single file system interface for all data. I have been advancing libferris towards that goal over the last ten years. Over that time, libferris has gained support for mounting relational databases; physical devices like printers, webcams, and scanners; composite files like Berkeley DB and XML files; applications like Amarok, Firefox, emacs, pulseaudio, XWindow, dbus, and evolution; and more recently web services like GDrive, YouTube, Vimeo, and Flickr, as well as many other things.
  
  

Graphics Stack

• Nouveau Gallium3D Now Supports OpenGL 3.2, 3.3

  With a fresh round of Mesa Git commits on Monday morning the support landed for OpenGL 3.2 and OpenGL 3.3 within Nouveau's NV50 and NVC0 Gallium3D drivers.





• SWC: A Wayland Compositor Framework

  Announced today to Wayland developers was SWC, a new Wayland compositor framework designed to be taken advantage of by window managers targeting Wayland.





• AMD Kaveri OpenCL Compared To Radeon & GeForce GPUs On Linux





• Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Is Still Sour For Some GPUs

  Nouveau, the reverse-engineered open-source NVIDIA Linux graphics driver that's been in development now for the better part of a decade, is working brilliantly for some NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards while for other NVIDIA GPUs the experience is a sloppy mess. Using the Linux 3.13 kernel and Mesa 10.1-devel Gallium3D driver code installed on top of Ubuntu 13.10, here's what the experience is like when trying a number of GeForce graphics cards with this latest open-source driver code.





• AMD Radeon Gallium3D Catches Up To Catalyst For Some Linux Games





• SimpleDRM Driver Gets A Major Rewrite

  SimpleDRM is aiming to be a rather generic and simple DRM driver for the mainline Linux kernel. SimpleDRM doesn't do hardware acceleration but can replace multiple existing frame-buffer drivers like efifb, vesafb, simplefb, and other code. This basic DRM driver can then work with the xf86-video-modesetting X.Org driver but there isn't yet any support for using this DRM driver on Wayland-based systems.

Benchmarks

• LLVM Clang vs. GCC Compilers For AMD's Steamroller

  Besides the interesting but disappointing AMD Kaveri Gallium3D vs. Catalyst Linux driver benchmarks published this morning, here's some more AMD A10-7850K "Kaveri" benchmarks for your Sunday viewing pleasure.





• Linux 3.8 To Linux 3.14 Intel DRM Graphics Benchmarks

  The latest benchmarks to share with you all are some tests done of all major Linux kernel releases from Linux 3.8 through Linux 3.13 and including the latest drm-next code that will land in the Linux 3.14 kernel. Here's a look at whether Intel Haswell HD Graphics users can expect any more performance improvements out of Linux 3.14 on the graphics front.





• Benchmarking CompuLab's Small, Low-Power Linux PCs





• 24-Way AMD Radeon vs. NVIDIA GeForce Linux Graphics Card Comparison

  After this weekend carrying out a 25-way open-source Linux graphics driver comparison featuring AMD Radeon, Intel HD Graphics, and NVIDIA GeForce hardware, the tables have now turned to look at nearly the same assortment of hardware but when using the high-performance, proprietary Linux graphics drivers. We've also upped the demanding OpenGL benchmarks used -- including the Source Engine -- as we see how the AMD and NVIDIA binary graphics drivers are doing to start 2014.





• 25-Way Open-Source Linux Graphics Card Comparison

  As alluded to in days earlier after finding major open-source Radeon driver improvements -- including the newer RadeonSI Gallium3D driver -- I've been conducting a fresh graphics card comparison spanning many graphics processors and looking at the latest open-source driver performance on the Intel, NVIDIA, and Radeon fronts under Ubuntu Linux. In this article is a 25-way Intel Haswell HD Graphics vs. AMD Radeon vs. NVIDIA GeForce graphics comparison from Ubuntu 13.10 with the upgraded Linux 3.13 kernel and Mesa 10.1 development driver code to provide a very bleeding edge look at what the open-source drivers have to offer the Linux desktop users.





• SanDisk 64GB Serial ATA 3.0 SSD On Ubuntu Linux





• Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD On Ubuntu Linux

  All drives were tested from an Intel Core i7 Haswell system while running Ubuntu 13.10 x86_64 with the Linux 3.13 kernel. The tested assortment of drives used (based upon their availability within our labs) included:

• Freescale's i.MX6 SoC Smacks The Old Intel Atom Z530

  For the past few weeks I've had the pleasure of playing with CompuLab's Utilite Computer. The Utilite is a miniature ARM desktop computer powered by Freescale's i.MX6 SoC and is running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. This is a speedy little Linux system that for some workloads can blow past Intel's original Atom Z530 "Poulsbo" SoC system.