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
- Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Smolweb and Alhena 5.1.7
- Links for the day
- XBox is Rapidly Turned Into a Slopfarm by Microsoft
- Slop isn't about efficiency and saving money
- Microsoft's Halloween Documents and systemd, Wayland, Etc.
- Maybe one day Wayland will be widespread. Or maybe not.
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- Reboots Should Never be Necessary
- "BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
- There's Still Hope for the World Wide Web
- Let's hope that the trajectory of the Web won't be leading us to over-reliance on Google, nor will it reward worthless slopfarms
- The Danes Want GNU/Linux
- David Heinemeier Hansson recently moved to GNU/Linux
- Cory Doctorow Explains Why Software Freedom Matters, Whereas "Open Source" Misses the Point and Helps Monopolies
- It's a very long article
- BillPR (EpsteinGate-Bribed NPR) is Turning Into a Partial Slopfarm that Promotes Slop
- "I went on a date with a chatbot!"
- Two Weeks Passed Since Latest Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, More Expected Next Month
- Blaming the debt on "AI" is just self-serving storytelling
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 14, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, July 14, 2025
- Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Gemini "Style Sheets" and Switching From Microsoft GitHub to Codeberg
- Links for the day
- Coming Soon: Another OSI Scandal, This One Implicating Molly de Blanc
- OSI has been fairly quiet lately
- Outreachy & Debian pregnancy cluster, Meike Reichle evidence
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Again, "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
- Microsoft Lunduke is not trying to "protect" Linux
- One of the Most Hilarious Things About the Microsoft SLAPPs
- It's so ridiculous
- Financial Support for the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project
- The FSF has extended until Friday its fund-raising campaign
- Illegally Hiding (or Demanding Secrecy Around) Illegal Requests or Attempts at Extortion
- unlawful communications like threats
- Gemini Links 14/07/2025: BOFH Archive, Updating Old Palm PDAS, and Nginx vs Slop Bots
- Links for the day
- Ubuntu is Becoming GAFAM-Like
- What does that say about Canonical and Ubuntu?
- Slopfarms Which Take Real Articles About GNU/Linux and Turn Them Into Copycats Which Are False
- Even before the LLM hype those were quite common
- The Firm That Picks on Techrights is Accustomed to Working With Criminals
- Techrights never did anything illegal. So why is it being picked on by people who work with criminals?
- Microsoft Said the Mass Layoffs Were for "Investment" in "AI", But It's Also Laying Off the "AI" and "Copilot" Staff
- Months ago we showed many so-called "AI" people were getting the boot and this time it's the same
- DryDeadFish is Dead, Long Live DryDeadFish
- We kept checking, hoping it can recover from some temporary technical issue
- For Quite Some Time Already Microsoft Attracts Crackpots, Scams, and More
- Occasionally we talk about the situation at IBM as there are many parallels
- Links 14/07/2025: Chatbots Broken Again, McHire LLM Shows Limits of the Hype
- Links for the day
- Changing One's Name Won't Change One's Past
- People who have earned a bad reputation are not magically "entitled" to reset
- People Who Assault Women Are Not Victims of "Distress"
- It seems like an American tradition. In a country with almost 50 presidents, not even one was a female.
- Slashdot Media Turned Linux Journal Into a Slopfarm and Now Slashdot Actively Promotes Anti-Linux Slopfarms
- Yes, "no-nonsense" apparently means actual nonsense
- Adoption of Gemini Protocol Still Growing
- Gemini Protocol is being obscured by the media - it doesn't help that Google 'hijacked' the word "Gemini" - but people still manage to find out about it, download a client, and use it
- Links 14/07/2025: Arresting Photographers, Threats to Revoke US Citizenship Over Criticism
- Links for the day
- More EPO Leaks on the Way
- We hope that Mr. Rowan will actually try to refute what we say and show, not merely point the finger at the messengers
- Decommodification is a Corporate Strategy Against Communities
- systemd is led by Microsoft and hosted by Microsoft
- copyleft.org 'Hijacked' by the People Who Attack the Person Who Created Copyleft
- So far there's nothing "tasteless" in copyleft.org, but that can change at any time in the future
- Asking People to Take Down Articles and Videos Only Makes These More Popular and "Viral"
- If you do something bad, one of the worst things you can possibly do it try to silence those who speak about it
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 13, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, July 13, 2025
- Two-Thirds Towards FSF Goal, Richard Stallman to Give Talks in Europe
- There are 67 left before reaching the target
- Brett Wilson LLP "Takes it Personal" (Character Assassination, Not Professionalism). Everybody Can See That.
- On behalf of violent men
- Gemini Links 14/07/2025: Politicised Tech and "Leaving GitHub"
- Links for the day
- Pissing Contests and Pissing Off Everyone
- people who came from Microsoft are trying to vex and divide the community
- Microsoft Repeats the Mistakes Made by the EPO After We Exposed a Major Microsoft/EPO Scandal 10 Years Ago
- That scandal was all over the media, not just in English
- The Demise of LLMs
- We've just checked BetaNews again. They've dropped all the slop and went back to human authors.
- Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Sonpo Museum of Art and FCEUX
- Links for the day
- Links 13/07/2025: UnitedHealth's Censorship Campaign, Australia Wary of China
- Links for the day
- Firing Away With Nonsense
- Or fighting fire with fire
- Links 13/07/2025: Climate Crisis, GAFAM Poisoning the Water
- Links for the day
- Turns Out LLMs for Code Don't Save Time and Don't Improve Quality
- Neither legal nor useful
- The Microsofters Will Have an Obligation to Compensate Us
- This story isn't just about Microsoft. It's also about corruption, there are many women victims, there is abject "abuse of process", and many more scandals to be illuminated in years to come.
- Reproducing at the EPO Instead of Producing Monopolies for Foreign Monopolies With Their Price-Fixing Cartels
- Does the EPO recognise the need of well-educated Europeans to bear kids?
- Valnet Inc. Dominates Real (Not LLM Slop) GNU/Linux Coverage in 2025
- And likely in prior years, too
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) Fund Raiser Goes on
- Later this month we'll expose another OSI scandal
- EPO Staff Representatives Issue a Warning About Staff's Health and Inadequate Care
- Even the EPO's own stakeholders (money sources) are openly protesting against what the EPO became
- Links 13/07/2025: Partly Assorted News From Deutsche Welle and CBC
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Board Games and Battle Styles
- Gemini Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 12, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, July 12, 2025