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Links 16/7/2017: Mesa 17.1.5, FreeBSD 11.1 RC3





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • How I put Linux in the enterprise
    I used to work in higher ed. In the late 1990s, we moved to a new student records system. We created an "add-on" web registration system, so students could register on-line—still a new idea in 1998. But when we finally went live, the load crushed the web servers. No one could register. We tried to fix it, but nothing worked.


  • Desktop





  • Kernel Space



    • Linux 4.12.2
      I'm announcing the release of the 4.12.2 kernel.

      All users of the 4.12 kernel series must upgrade.

      The updated 4.12.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.12.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st...


    • Linux 4.11.11
    • Linux 4.9.38
    • Linux 4.4.77
    • Linux 3.18.61


    • UBIFS Gets Statx Support, Better Encryption In Linux 4.13
      The Linux 4.13 kernel changes for the UBIFS file-system have been submitted.

      UBIFS, as a reminder, is the Unsorted Block Image File-System deigned for flash memory devices off the UBI layer. UBIFS in Linux 4.10 gained file-encryption support making use of the fscrypt functionality used as well by F2FS and EXT4. With Linux 4.13, there are UBIFS related encryption updates and fixes.


    • Linux 4.13 Thermal Management Sees Some Improvements For CPU_Cooling
      The thermal management updates have landed in the Linux 4.13 code-base.


    • Linux 4.13-rc1 Kernel Released


    • Merge window over - Linux 4.13-rc1 out
      Ok, normally I do this on Sunday afternoon, but occasionally it happens a day early like now to avoid people timing me.

      In fact, I was planning on doing it yesterday evening this time around because I was so annoyed with lots of late pull requests on Friday (and some today), but ended up going to dinner and not getting everything done, so it's only one day early. Next time...


    • The New Changes & Features Of The Linux 4.13 Kernel
      With Linux 4.13-rc1 having been released, here's my original look at the new features coming for the Linux 4.13 kernel and the other changes merged over the past two weeks of this new cycle.



    • Please pull NFS client changes for Linux 4.13


    • Graphics Stack



      • Mesa 17.1.5 Brings More Fixes To Open-Source GPU Driver Users
        Andres Gomez of Igalia has announced Mesa 17.1.5 as the newest point release to the current Mesa 3D stable series.

        Mesa 17.1.5 fixes a potential crash in core Mesa, has Vulkan / SPIR-V fixes, the usual notable fixes in the Intel i965 and RadeonSI drivers, and some smaller fixes to Etnaviv, OpenSWR, SVGA, and other parts of this massive user-space 3D graphics stack.


      • [Mesa-announce] [ANNOUNCE] mesa 17.1.5
        In Mesa Core we include a fix to prevent a potential crash.


      • Mesa 17.1.5 Linux Graphics Stack Released, Improves AMD Radeon & Intel Drivers
        After teasing us a couple of days ago with the upcoming availability of the fifth maintenance update to the Mesa 17.1 3D Graphics Stack for GNU/Linux distributions, Mesa developer Andres Gomez is now announcing the final release of Mesa 17.1.5.

        Mesa 17.1.5 comes only two weeks after the Mesa 17.1.4 update that probably many of you are using right now on your Linux distros, and it's here to add an extra layer of improvements for those using AMD Radeon or Intel graphics cards. First off, Mesa 17.1.5 fixes a potential crash in Mesa Core, adds better support for the GLSL and SPIR-V compilers, and solves a linking problem with standalone Android builds.


      • Vulkan 1.0.54 Lands In Mesa For Intel ANV, Some RADV Extensions
        It's fabulous to see how promptly the Mesa Vulkan drivers are receiving support for new extensions.

        Vulkan 1.0.54 was released on Thursday. This updated promoted the external memory and semaphores extensions from experimental to stable. They also added new extensions for 16-bit storage, dedicated allocation, storage buffer storage class, variable pointers, new memory requirements query, and external fences for external memory.


      • Difficulties and Success Stories
        This hints to a fundamental issue with our approach of using the Present extension in Xwayland. The extension was written with hardware in mind. It assumes a flip happens directly on a screen. There is no intermediate link like a Wayland compositor and if a flip has happened the old buffer is not on the screen anymore. Why do we still try to leverage the Present extension support in Xwayland then? There are two important features of a Wayland compositor we want to have with Xwayland: A tear-free experience for the user and the ability to output a buffer rendered by a direct rendering client on a hardware plane without any copies in between. Every frame is perfect should also remain valid when using some legacy application and that we want no unnecessary copies is simply a question of performance improvements. This is especially important for many of the more demanding games out there, which won’t be Wayland native in the short term and some of them maybe never. Both features need the the full Present extension support in the Xwayland DDX. Without it a direct rendering application would still use the Present extension but only with its fallback code path of copying the Pixmap’s content. And for a tear-free experience we would at least need to sync these copies to the frame events sent by the Wayland compositor or better directly allow multiple buffers, otherwise we would limit our frame rate. In both cases this means again to increase the Present extension support.


      • It Looks Like Intel Could Begin Pushing Graphics Tech More Seriously
        It's been a while now since last seeing some major graphics advancements on Intel CPUs. With Skylake/Kabylake we are on "Gen 9" graphics, Kabylake-Refresh / Coffeelake is still Gen9 graphics, Broadwell was on Gen8, Haswell on Gen7.5, and IvyBridge on Gen 7. But with upcoming launches past Kabylake-Refresh/Coffeelake, it looks like we'll be stamping out Gen 10, Gen 11, and Gen 12.


      • Codeplay Release “clspv”, an OpenCL Tool for Vulkan Enabled Devices
        In collaboration with Google, Codeplay is proud to announce the release of a new open-source tool allowing the compilation of OpenCL C language kernels to run on the Vulkan API.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt



      • digiKam GSoC Students in Egypt


        It was nice meeting Ahmed and Shaza @ faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University in Cairo. I am proud to mentor them in Google Summer of Code.

        Ahmed is working on implementing a DLNA server in digiKam core to export photo and video hosted in physical and virtual collections. The server is ready and he working on the configuration panel UI. See more here.



      • Best be precise
        KSysGuard — the system monitor — on FreeBSD seems oddly precise.


      • Plasma Wayland and Qt 5.9 and beyond
        As you might know Qt 5.8 created challenging problems for our Wayland session and threw our efforts back quite a bit. In this post I want to discuss the actual problems it created, how we are addressing them and looking into the future.


      • The Regressed State Of KDE Plasma On Wayland, But Things Should Get Better
        KWin maintainer Martin Gräßlin has written a blog post explaining the issues they've run into with KDE Plasma on Wayland and how changes to Qt have set them back months in their Wayland session support.


      • Akademy Schedule
        The workshops and lightning talks and BoFs are being planned, too. I’m glad Anu Mittal has mentioned her QML + JS workshop, it’s a great topic for getting started with application development. QML is something I’ve never gotten in to, but should, so I’ve penciled this workshop into my schedule as well.


      • [Krita] GSoC’17-Week #4


      • KF5 Applications Porting


        Next week, KDE developers will release the beta of KDE Applications 17.08. This release will again have more applications and nearly all games ported to Qt5/KF5. While Qt4 is already no longer supported for over a year, KDE has decided to support Qt4/kdelibs4-based applications a bit longer.

        The 17.08 release, however, will be the last to include Qt4/kdelibs4-based applications. This means, 17.12 will only include applications that are based on Qt5/KF5. See this mailing list discussion.


      • Kdenlive 17.04.3 released
        In comparison to previous versions this was the least exciting development cycle, in terms of new features, since all focus has been on the code refactoring which will bring more stability and new features. Don’t miss the next Café to keep track on the progress and share your thoughts if you like.






  • Distributions



    • Reviews



      • Solus 2017.04.18.0 review - Second time lucky?
        Solus 2017 looks like a nice distro, with some obvious visual caveats and tiny functional quirks. It's reasonable enough than I'm determined to test it on non-UEFI hardware, where I'll hopefully have more luck. But on a UEFI platform, it seems hopeless. I don't know there should be a problem when so many other distros do just fine without any issues. Solus seems to be a special snowflake, and it does not cooperate well with a modern and complex system.

        All in all, I cannot recommend the distro, because the outcome may still be harmful. If a distro cannot install properly, the results can be unpredictable. My testing shows some very favorable things, and Budgie looks quite all right now, but as a package, Solus just doesn't handle UEFI well. I'll report back after a third, and hopefully lucky test, but you are warned to carefully proceed until the hardware side has been polished. Double sigh. Maybe another another time.


      • A Short Review of Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Cinnamon LTS




    • New Releases



      • Introducing Endless OS 3.2
        This major release brings some exciting changes with a refreshed desktop, great visual improvements, and more offline apps for our users in Southeast Asia to enjoy. Since this is a major release, make sure to update your OS (Settings > Details > Check for updates now), before you update your apps from the App Center!




    • Red Hat Family



    • Debian Family





  • Devices/Embedded





Free Software/Open Source



  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Pale Moon browser new release, better media support


        I have updated my palemoon.SlackBuild and have uploaded fresh Slackware packages for this new Pale Moon 27.4.0. As previously shared with you, I diverge from the official developers’ recommendations about how to compile this browser on Linux. For instance the gcc compiler I used on Slackware 14.2 is gcc-5.3.0 (which is part of this distro release). On -current I failed compiling with the gcc-7.1.0 compiler which is the default there and I had to create a “gcc5” package for gcc-5.4.0 (which was an earlier gcc version in slackware-current). I wrote an article on this very blog about that gcc5 package if you are interested, it can be installed in parallel with Slackware’s own gcc-7. There are some other differences, mainly in the way I optimize my build.






  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • LibreOffice 5.3.4 Released and Available via PPA for Ubuntu/Linux Mint
      LibreOffice is the power-packed free, libre and open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, the word processor, Calc, the spreadsheet application, Impress, the presentation engine, Draw, our drawing and flowcharting application, Base, our database and database frontend, and Math for editing mathematics. Its clean interface and powerful tools let you unleash your creativity and grow your productivity. Support and documentation is free from our large, dedicated community of users, contributors and developers.




  • BSD



    • NAS4Free 11.1.0.4.4485 Released


    • FreeBSD 11.1-RC3 Available
      The third RC build for the FreeBSD 11.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386, aarch64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.


    • FreeBSD 11.1-RC3 Now Available
      The third RC build of the 11.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available. This is expected to be the final RC build of the 11.1-RELEASE cycle.


    • FreeBSD 11.1 RC3 Released As The Final Build Is Near
      FreeBSD 11.1 remains on track for releasing later this month.

      FreeBSD 11.1 RC3 is available this weekend as what should be the final release candidate for this minor update to FreeBSD 11. Changes found in FreeBSD 11.1 RC3 include adding deprecation notices to gdb/kgdb/sicontrol/wlconfig and other drivers that will be removed in FreeBSD 12.0, Capsicum support in the Bhyve virtualization code, and various other fixes and clean-ups.




  • Licensing/Legal



    • EUPL v1.2 becomes OSI approved

      "The OSI has approved EUPL v1.2. It will be added to the public list of OSI-approved licenses in due course. As with EUPL 1.1, the approval extends to all the official language versions of the license."





Leftovers



Recent Techrights' Posts

Real Security Elusive, Microsoft Layoffs to Coincide With Certificate Apocalypse
July 1
2026 is a Year of Strikes at the European Patent Office (EPO)
As it stands at the moment, to many people the EPO represents crime, not law
Only 1.5% Oppose the European Patent Office's (EPO) Strikes and Other Industrial Actions Until 2027
Among those polled/surveyed (in a ballot)
 
European Patent Office's (EPO) Strikes "at a Scale not Seen Since Battistelli", European Patent Grants Down by Over 25% in Past 3 Months
The actions are effective
Links 20/06/2026: Microsoft's "Year of Shame" and "Feed the Writers"
Links for the day
Web Browsers Are Technically Bloatware (No Matter What Runs in Them)
Don't make it a society that shames people into using a Web browser where none should be needed
Fedora Has Changed a Lot Since I Last Used It (IBM Dominates Almost Everything, IBM Agenda Displaces Community Goals)
"It is effectively 100% run by Red Hat/IBM employed people... even when they are community-elected representatives."
Andy (Cyber Show) on His Teacher Who "Squeezed Every Last Drop Out of Life, With Gratitude, Humility, Generosity and Mettle"
Some call them "eccentric" and are dismissive about what they have to offer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 19, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, June 19, 2026
Gopher/Gemini Links 20/06/2026: Slop With Tcl/Tk and Nokia 770 Perishes
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 111 Out of 200: Garrett and Graveley (the Latter Arrested for Strangling Women) Keep Ousting Their Collaboration in Litigation, Lawfare in a Foreign Continent
it's not law, it's just warfare disguised as "law"
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Lobbying in Lisbon...
reappointment campaign lobbying has not been restricted to the "home front" in Portugal
Slop Making Its Way Into Terms Where It Does Not Belong
Hopefully by year's end Google News can successfully cull (and deprive of traffic) almost all slopfarms
Links 19/06/2026: Microsoft Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures in Europe, "World Cup of Internet Resilience"
Links for the day
Links 19/06/2026: Salesforce Data Thefts and GAFAM's Conspiracy Theories That Data Center Opposition is a Foreign Plot
Links for the day
Links 19/06/2026: The Retweeting Class and Data Centres as National Security Risk
Links for the day
Don't Attack the Wives (or Spouses) of Pundits/Activists/Journalists
We will be writing several series about this in the future
Society Will Only Improve Owing to People Who Push Boundaries
Push boundaries with ideas and facts, not with forbidden language
Internet Relay Chat (Shorthand IRC) is Still Growing
Contrariwise, social control media is waning
The Register MS Published a New Page With "AI" 21 Times in It. It Was Paid SPAM.
The former editor of the The Register MS admitted to me (directly) that he knew all this "AI" stuff was stupid hype
Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Associates Dependence on a Ponzi Scheme With "the Future"
Those ludicrous ads (disguised as rankings) from WSJ deserve scorn and ridicule
The XBox Story is Still Fast-Developing, the Layoffs Are Confirmed to be Happening Already (Mid-June), Just Not "Officially"
Workers have Microsoft have long braced for what is happening this summer and will accelerate further in two weeks' time
Fake News From Rupert Murdoch's WSJ Could Not Keep IBM From Sinking
"2026 Best Companies for the Future"?
To GNU, AV2 Adoption May be a Year If Not Years Away
The leap between versions means that there is fertile ground for incompatibilities
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 18, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, June 18, 2026
Gemini Links 19/06/2026: "Born and Raised by the Internet", Fifteen Years in Gopher
Links for the day
Links 18/06/2026: Clown Computing Has Harmful Sound, Facebook "Must Face the Music (Infringement Litigation)"
Links for the day
Digital Sovereignty Discussed in the United Kingdom (UK)
Digital Sovereignty would be nice, but let's remember what contributes to it
IBM Adds Only More IBM Staff to the Fedora Council, They Like LLM Slop for Posting 'Articles'
It's like Canonical with Ubuntu, only worse
IBM Common Stock Down to About $250, It Was at $330 Just 17 Days Ago
Happy birthday IBM!
Microsoft's CEO Openly Admits XBox is Not Sustainable and Microsoft is Beginning to Admit Slop Isn't Working and Is Not Not Sustainable Either
Expect Microsoft cancellations next month (or later this month) to impact far more than XBox and some studios
EPO and Disabilities: Payments Allegedly Disabled
But people who do cocaine can claim paid "sick leave" (over 100,000 euros for no work at all) if the President sleeps with them
SLAPP Censorship - Part 110 Out of 200: Anti-SLAPP Reform Formally Advanced in the United Kingdom (UK) the Same Week the Serial Strangler From Microsoft (US) Does Forum-Shopping in the UK
The only language they understand is money. They don't understand privacy.
Links 18/06/2026: UK Social Media Ban for Minors, Finland Lifts a Nuclear Weapons Ban
Links for the day
'Article' With "AI" 27 Times in the Page, It's "Partner Content" (Paid Spam) as Usual at The Register MS
We deem this a timely reminder that a lot of the hype around slop is paid-for lies
Microsoft Layoffs Have Reportedly Already Started at ZeniMax
The overall scale is unknown
Cyber Show: "Our independence remains intact and we're set to continue relentlessly probing the world of digital technology with hard questions"
As one should
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Leveraging the Lusitanian Connection
Mendonça no longer functions as an independent agent but rather as a fig-leaf for a mafia-like entity that prizes obedience over integrity and self-preservation over truth
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 17, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 17, 2026