Kernel (Linux) News: A Week's News in a Nutshell
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-12 08:25:09 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-12 08:25:09 UTC
Linux
The Imaging Source has announced the immediate availability of open source Linux support for all of its cameras.
If you are using any of the versions released until now in the Linux kernel 3.12.x branch, you should consider an update to this build. Keep in mind that this is an LTS release, which means that it's going to be around for a very long time. If you feel adventurous, you can ditch this LTS branch and go for the latest 3.14 version.
This is not the big update that everyone has been waiting for, but at least there are a few things that will definitely catch your eye. For example, support has been added for systemd and upstart to control the Hamachi service, the network list is now immediately updated after going online or offline in a network, and the update interval count is now reset after each manual update.
File Systems
Linux 3.15
A second Git pull request has been made for the ACPI and power management code within the kernel for Linux 3.15.
Earlier in April I wrote about link-time optimization support for the kernel nearing reality. LTO support for the Linux kernel has been in the works since 2012 but only with Linux 3.15 will it become a mainline possibility. Link-Time Optimizations via GCC and other compilers allow for various compile-time optimizations to be applied across the binary as a whole. Enabling link-time optimizations can yield some significant performance improvements but results in much slower compile times and with large programs can cause problems due to the size of optimizing the complete binary at once.
Graphics Stack
With OpenArena the frame-rate went from just 8 FPS on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to 19 FPS when using the Linux 3.14 kernel. Linux 3.14 allows for the R3 Graphics to re-clock to their highest performance state compared to Linux 3.13 where DPM isn't enabled by default for GCN GPUs. When going to Mesa 10.2-devel that will be officially released in about one month, the frame-rate rose to 25 FPS... That's over a three-fold performance improvement when pulling in the bleeding edge latest code.
Wayland
Intel developers continue experimenting with a Resize and Rotate protocol extension for Wayland's Weston compositor that was originally designed for the X.Org Server.
Intel
The "Cherryview" Atom processors feature "Gen8" graphics (Broadwell) capabilities, there's three display pipes, three HDMI/DisplayPort/EmbeddedDisplayPort ports, two MIPI DSI display ports, and VGA support has been dropped from Cherryview.
AMD
Alex Deucher sent out a set of three patches today to update the microcode used by the AMD "Southern Islands" graphics processors.
As expected AMD unveiled the Radeon R9 295X graphics card this morning as the "world's fastest" for those with $1500 USD to spare.
After much information being made public in March concerning AMD's AM1 platform that delivers socketed APUs for low-cost desktop systems, the first of these new socketed APUs are shipping today under the restored Athlon and Sempron branding. We've been fortunate enough to have one of the new Athlon AM1 APUs at Phoronix for a few days of testing.
Gallium3D
The Gallium3D HUD has gain some new reporting capabilities for the Radeon Gallium3D R600 and RadeonSI drivers.
X.Org
Keith wrote on the mailing list, "With this, the 1.16 merge window comes to a close. Thanks to everyone who contributed a huge pile of fixes and new features! We're a week behind schedule; Kristian was a bit late with Xwayland, and that included a driver-visible API change that needed fixing (this appears to have been my fault originally)."
NVIDIA
This latest driver update arrives only a day after the previous Beta release, which caused quite a stir because it featured the option to overclock the video card. It may not seem like much but, in fact, this is actually great progress for the NVIDIA drivers.
Benchmarks
Recent Techrights' Posts
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 29 Out of 200: Violent Language Won't Go Away When You Use It in Your Site, Blog, and Social Control Media
- abuse began in 2012 because I had politely and accurately criticised Red Hat
- Lacking Business Model, Bluesky Has Become Slop and Gravitates Towards Plagiarism, Bots
- LLM slop/plagiarism under the guise of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI)
-
- Links 01/04/2026: Microsoft GitHub Now Pushing Ads Into People's Code/Commits, Earth Overshoot Day Draws Nearer
- Links for the day
- What IBM and EPO Workers Have in Common: European Media Not Covering Very Major News (Press Became Dysfunctional)
- Are IBM operatives working to scuttle the process of investigative journalism?
- Free Speech in the United Kingdom When "Chilling Effect" is Increasingly Prevalent
- If politicians cannot even use a term like "parasitic behaviour", then where do we as a society end up?
- Oracle Lays Off Because of Debt and Commercial Issues, Not Slop
- Like Scam Altman, Larry Ellison hangs around Cheeto King because he could use some bailouts in the form of government contracts or phony money with an incredible name like "Stargate"
- The Real Reason Many Sites and Forums Shun Microsoft Lunduke
- When forums say that they banned Microsoft Lunduke or don't want him mentioned it's probably because they are familiar with the "stench" that follows him around
- Gemini Links 01/04/2026: Hallucinations, Stitching, and Type Systems
- Links for the day
- Lots of Layoffs at IBM, "Media Blackout" About Mass Layoffs at IBM's HashiCorp and Confluent Last Month
- IBM is a dying company circling down the drain while manipulating or paying the media to pretend everything is fine
- Microsoft Under Investigation by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for Abusive Tactics
- What's noteworthy is that this is "set to begin in May"
- Sounds Like Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs in Slop Clothing
- This is an IBM policy. They try to justify staff cuts.
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 31, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, March 31, 2026
- In Time for April Fools (and Easter), 30,000 Oracle 'Pink Slips' While People Are Asleep
- Oracle probably has no choice but to fire a ton of people
- Gemini Links 31/03/2026: Five Years on Gemini (Rob's Gemini Capsule), OFFLIFIRSOCH 2026, and More
- Links for the day
- Slopfarms Persist, But Google Seems to Have Delisted Many
- We are still checking
- Links 31/03/2026: More Energy Shortages Noted, Taylor Swift Faces Trademark Infringement Suit
- Links for the day
- Chaff, Slop and Spam Help Distract From Parallel Crises at IBM
- IBM seems very eager to undermine discussion about what goes on inside
- IBM-Spawned Lexmark Sold, Then Came Mass Layoffs, Now the CEO Who Did This is Leaving
- IBM is really not a magnet for talent at this point
- Not April Fools But April First: Red Hat Staff Becoming "IBM"
- claims of mass layoffs set to kick off at IBM some time soon
- Gemini Links 31/03/2026: Antenna Packed Up, AuraGem and AuraSearch Maintenance
- Links for the day
- Links 31/03/2026: More Social Control Media Bans, BBC Now Run by GAFAM (US) Executive
- Links for the day
- 'Broligarchs' Don't Want Science, They Want Entertainers to Entertain Them (and Make Them Richer)
- Of course this will result in things getting worse in the sciences and everyone who relies on the sciences
- When Republics Turn From Democratic Governments Into Imperialistic Dictatorships
- What goes on in the US would require talking about politics
- Companies That Have Nothing Except Buzzwords and Promises Will Perish
- Dishonest media will perish along with the companies it is covering up for
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to be Grilled in Two Weeks' Time by the British Government for "Recent Regulatory Failures"
- we escalated to our politicians
- GNU/Linux Will Thrive as Long as It's Modular, Not Monolithic
- To IBM, it's all about money. Nothing else matters.
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part X - People Are Leaving
- "I was happy to be at the EPO in the beginning, but since I realized it's all a big mafia"
- IBM's 33 Years as a "Financial Engineering" (Accounting Tricks) Company
- In relation to Red Hat, this "financial engineering" involves culling many workers and trying to replace them with slop
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 30, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, March 30, 2026
- Links 31/03/2026: Rising Costs, Cyberattacks, Novo Patent Expiry
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 31/03/2026: American Spring, Distributed Systems Simulator, and Calculus for Electronics
- Links for the day
- SUEPO Central Made a Strike (or Striking) Success
- Europe has more than enough qualified patent officials
- IBM Layoffs and Their Expected Scope in April 2026
- Such layoffs impact not only IBM "proper"
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 28 Out of 200: Facing Consequences for Impersonation and Worse
- It's not "funny". It is moreover libellous.
- Links 30/03/2026: South Korea Next to Curb Social Control Media Addiction and Manipulation, Notorious Patents in the US Challenged
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 30/03/2026: Going Back to Wrist Watches and Why LLMs in Programming Suck
- Links for the day
- Did IBM Pay thestreet.com for Puff Pieces? (Like It Did With Forbes)
- If so, there is no disclosure
- Wikipedia - Funded by Slop-pushing Companies and 'Broligarchs' - Gave Benefit of the Doubt to Slop, Then Regretted It
- Wikipedia sucks. Without slop it'll suck a little less.
- Payoffs of Lifelong Commitments
- "The Lifelong Activist"
- Links 30/03/2026: "We Can’t Income-Tax Ultra-Elites"; "The Pirate Bay’s Oldest Torrent Turned 22"
- Links for the day
- Today, Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) Goes on Strike That Can Last Until 2027. Nobody in the Media Covers This!
- "We stand with the protesters"
- When the Cost (or Time) of Maintenance Exceeds the Value
- In recent years it seems like more people learn to remove things from their lives, not add more things
- Passage of Wealth Upwards, Blaming the Victims
- Tim Sweeney's net worth is 5.1 billion USD according to Forbes
- More Media Needs to Tell the Public Slop is a Giant Bubble, It Should Stop Taking "Sponsorship" Money to Inflate This Bubble
- If enough of (what's left of) the media changes its tune and quits being a parrot of GAFAM, then we can debate slop like grown-ups
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 29, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, March 29, 2026
- Trying to Hide One's Abuses by Imposing Silence on Critics ("My Profile Was Private")
- With enough daylight, sooner or later everyone knows you are a vampire
- Fedora Badges System Shows the Demise of Fedora Under IBM
- IBM isn't good at keeping what it buys
- IBM is Sunsetting Red Hat, It Only Uses the Brand and the Shell
- IBM buys or spins off companies as containers for "toxic assets" and debt
- Cisco Systems is a Still Weak Spot With Bug Doors
- nothing to offer except storytelling
- EPO Strike Begins Today and It's the Longest One Yet (Can Last a Year)
- Where's the media?
- Gemini Links 30/03/2026: Approaching April and Arvelie Calendar
- Links for the day
