Linux (Kernel) News From the Past Week
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-07 15:34:56 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-07 15:34:56 UTC
Summary: News about Linux, accumulated and sorted over the past days for easier digestion
Linux 3.14
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With yesterday's release of the Linux 3.14-rc1, here's a look at the top features that were merged for introduction in the Linux 3.14 kernel.
The mentioned features are what I've found most interesting about this next major kernel release to date based upon the dozens of articles I've already authored on Phoronix about Linux 3.14, my testing already of 3.14 development code on multiple systems, analytics via Anzwix, etc.
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In a fixes pull request sent in by Red Hat's David Airlie last night, a handful of DRM driver bugs were corrected. Additionally, there's an update to the command submission (CS) parser for the R600 and R700 generation GPUs (the Radeon HD 2000 through HD 4000 series hardware) to support setting up the OpenGL Geometry Shader rings. The Evergreen GPUs and newer already has this GS support within their CS parser.
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"I realize that as a number, 3.14 looks familiar to people, and I had naming requests related to that. But that's simply not how the nonsense kernel names work," Torvalds wrote. "You can console yourself with the fact that the name doesn't actually show up anywhere, and nobody really cares. So any pi-related name you make up will be *quite* as relevant as the one in the main Makefile, so don't get depressed."
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Linux kernel 3.14 RC1 includes updated drivers, architecture updates (ARM mostly, x86, PowerPC, s390, mips, and ia64), core kernel improvements, networking, mm, tooling, etc.
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While the EXT4 changes and XFS alterations for the Linux 3.14 kernel weren't too exciting, the Btrfs file-system update was submitted today for Linux 3.14 and it's definitely exciting.
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These latest MIPS designs, which were announced back in 2012, are described as "the interAptiv is a power-efficient multi-core microprocessor for use in system-on-chip (SoC) applications. The interAptiv combines a multi-threading pipeline with a coherence manager to deliver improved computational throughput and power efficiency. The interAptiv can contain one to four MIPS32R3 interAptiv cores, system level coherence manager with L2 cache, optional coherent I/O port, and optional floating point unit."
Linux 3.13
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After the recent tests of AMD's Kaveri APU with DDR3-800MHz to DDR3-2133MHz Linux memory testing and following up with AMD Kaveri DDR3-2400MHz testing on Ubuntu Linux, many Phoronix readers followed up with a request of new memory testing done on the Intel side. In this article are benchmarks of a Core i5 Haswell CPU looking at the CPU and graphics performance impact with memory frequency scaling on Ubuntu 14.04 with the Linux 3.13 kernel.
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The first update for the stable Linux kernel 3.13 has been announced by Greg Kroah-Hartman just a few minutes ago, starting the maintenance cycle for this new branch.
LLVM/Clang
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After a few days ago showing LLVM Clang 3.4 running very well on AMD's Kaveri APU, here are some benchmarks of GCC 4.8.2, the latest GCC 4.9 development snapshot, and LLVM Clang 3.4 from an Intel Core i5 "Haswell" system running Ubuntu 14.04 with the Linux 3.13 kernel.
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A group of developers remain hard at work on the LLVMLinux project to build the mainline Linux kernel on x86 and ARM with the Clang compiler.
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Thanks to Jakob's work on Sparcv9 ABI in Clang and recent changes to Sparc code generator, I am happy to announce that Clang can self host itself on Linux/Sparc64 and on FreeBSD/Sparc64.
Graphics Stack
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Rob Clark has landed a new shader compiler into his Freedreno Gallium3D open-source graphics driver for Qualcomm's Adreno A3xx hardware.
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AMD is doing another large and important open-source graphics driver code drop this morning. This morning AMD is publishing their VCE code that allows for hardware-based video encoding.
Since last year AMD has provided open-source UVD support for video decoding on modern Radeon GPUs. There still isn't any open-source UVD1 support (only UVD 2.0 and newer), but now AMD has turned its focus to open-source hardware-accelerated video encoding.
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The new compiler generates a dependency graph of instructions, including a few meta-instructions to handle PHI and preserve some extra information needed for register assignment, etc.
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Many people where worried about some Steam Machines using AMD graphics, I was too, but considering they are applying direct fixes for SteamOS as detailed below I don't think we will have to worry too much.
Benchmarks
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The latest Linux distribution benchmarks to share at Phoronix are a comparison of Manjaro Linux 0.8.8, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in its current development state, openSUSE 13.1, and Fedora 20. All tests were done from an Intel Core i5 4670 Haswell system to look at the current state of various Linux distributions when it comes to various areas of open-source performance.
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The latest kernel benchmarking that happened at Phoronix was testing every major Linux kernel release from Linux 3.3 through the latest stable Linux 3.13 release from an Intel Sandy Bridge system to see how the kernel performance has evolved during the hardware's lifetime for key subsystems.
Misc.
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Daniel Phillips, a lead Tux3 developer, wrote to the kernel mailing list on Monday and acknowledged that it's been a long time coming for Tux3... We covered Tux3 back in 2008 as the Tux2 successor that was never merged due to licensing issues and then it had been quite some time without any news on Tux3, until it was resurrected in early 2013.
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I reached out to Tip4Commit to find out just how many people were not collecting tips. One of its creators, Arsen Gasparyan, got back to me with some data. He shared with me that, as of last week, Tip4Commit supported 337 GitHub projects, for which 9,076 tips have been earned (a tip is earned when a pull request for a commit on a supported project is accepted), totaling about 3.34 ÃÆ (worth about $2,650 at today's Bitcoin exchange rate of $793.20). However, only 1.956 ÃÆ has been received by 67 users, meaning 1.384 ÃÆ, a little under $1,100 or about 40% of the value of all tips, has gone unclaimed.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- [Video] Microsoft Got Its Systems Cracked (Breached) Again, This Time by Russia, and It Uses Its Moles in the Press and So-called 'Linux' Foundation to Change the Subject
- If they control the narrative (or buy the narrative), they can do anything
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- Sven Luther, Lucy Wayland & Debian's toxic culture
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Chris Rutter, ARM Ltd IPO, Winchester College & Debian
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 19/04/2024: Israel Fires Back at Iran and Many Layoffs in the US
- Links for the day
- Russell Coker & Debian: September 11 Islamist sympathy
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Sven Luther, Thomas Bushnell & Debian's September 11 discussion
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- G.A.I./Hey Hi (AI) Bubble Bursting With More Mass Layoffs
- it's happening already
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 18, 2024
- IRC logs for Thursday, April 18, 2024
- Coroner's Report: Lucy Wayland & Debian Abuse Culture
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 18/04/2024: Misuse of COVID Stimulus Money, Governments Buying Your Data
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/04/2024: GemText Pain and Web 1.0
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/04/2024: Google Layoffs Again, ByteDance Scandals Return
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/04/2024: Trying OpenBSD and War on Links Continues
- Links for the day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 17, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, April 17, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- North America, Home of Microsoft and of Windows, is Moving to GNU/Linux
- Can it top 5% by year's end?
- [Meme] The Heart of Staff Rep
- Rowan heartily grateful
- Management-Friendly Staff Representatives at the EPO Voted Out (or Simply Did Not Run Anymore)
- The good news is that they're no longer in a position of authority
- Microsofters in 'Linux Foundation' Clothing Continue to Shift Security Scrutiny to 'Linux'
- Pay closer attention to the latest Microsoft breach and security catastrophes
- Links 17/04/2024: Free-Market Policies Wane, China Marks Economic Recovery
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/04/2024: "Failure Is An Option", Profectus Alpha 0.5 From a Microsofter Trying to Dethrone Gemini
- Links for the day
- How does unpaid Debian work impact our families?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Microsoft's Windows Falls to All-Time Low and Layoffs Reported by Managers in the Windows Division
- One manager probably broke an NDA or two when he spoke about it in social control media
- When you give money to Debian, where does it go?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- How do teams work in Debian?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Joint Authors & Debian Family Legitimate Interests
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Bad faith: Debian logo and theme use authorized
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 17/04/2024: TikTok Killing Youth, More Layoff Rounds
- Links for the day
- Jack Wallen Has Been Assigned by ZDNet to Write Fake (Sponsored) 'Reviews'
- Wallen is selling out. Shilling for the corporations, not the community.
- Links 17/04/2024: SAP, Kwalee, and Take-Two Layoffs
- Links for the day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 16, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, April 16, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day