Phoronix Kernel-oriented News
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-08 09:58:01 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-08 09:58:01 UTC
Linux
Linux 3.15
For those not keeping up to date on all of the Phoronix articles covering the Linux 3.15 kernel changes that landed in the past week, here's a recap of the changes that were merged so far half-way through the Linux 3.15 merge window.
Graphics Stack
The very large DRM pull request for the Linux 3.15 kernel was submitted just moments ago with significant updates to the open-source Linux graphics drivers.
Wayland's reference compositor Weston now has support for using the new XWayland DDX support that was merged into the X.Org Server.
Users of the Samsung Exynos DRM driver will see several updates appear with the Linux 3.15 kernel.
Users of the Samsung Exynos DRM for display support with Samsung's recent ARM SoCs can find the addition of a MIPI-DSI driver, S6E8AA0 MIPI-DSI-based panel drivers with accompanying DeviceTree bindings, a LD9040 parallel-panel driver, super device support, and other fixes.
NVIDIA
In my testing of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with the Linux 3.13 kernel and Mesa 10.1 for the open-source graphics driver stack provided by Nouveau for NVIDIA GeForce graphics hardware, only the Fermi and Kepler GPUs are running reliably. While these newer NVIDIA GPUs are running stable with Ubuntu 14.04, the performance is still a wreck due to lack of reclocking.
The xf86-video-nouveau driver as of today supports server-managed file descriptors. As explained in the earlier Phoronix article, Last month we wrote about Red Hat working on a suid root wrapper for the X.org Server and other improvements being led by Red Hat's Hans de Goede to run Xorg in more configurations without needing root support. As part of this, sever managed file descriptors (FDs) has been one of the changes needed by the X.Org graphics drivers for supporting this change of running the xorg-server without root rights. Besides needing changes to the DDX drivers and the X.Org Server (those changes are landing with X.Org Server 1.16 this summer), systemd-logind is also needed.
Benchmarks
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Further Media Cut-downs
- media reporting about the media being cut
- Gemini Links 09/09/2025: Moon Eclipse and ROOPHLOCH Reports
- Links for the day
- Official SUSE Blog Still Uses LLM Slop (Bots) to Make Fake Articles (Marketing)
- The company is all about sound bites
- Companies Realise That Slop Doesn't Work as Advertised, Accordingly Dump It
- "Hype dims as a country-wide survey of US corporations shows a sudden drop-off in AI use among firms with more than 250 employees."
- Microsoft-Funded Lawsuits Against Critics of UEFI 'Secure Boot'
- Remember that no company (or law firm) ever survives collaborations with Microsoft
- It's Only the Second Week of September and Already Two Waves of Layoffs at Microsoft, Slopfarms and Microsoft-Funded Sites Spin It as "AI Investments" Rather Than Commercial Failure
- A very large third one expected next week
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- statCounter Sees GNU/Linux Exceeding 10% in Bulgaria This Month
- What can Microsoft still do to stop GNU/Linux?
- Dark Patterns
- Microsoft saying "security" is like a Convicted Felon in the White House saying "law and order".
- It's Almost Fall (Autumn)
- To "Facebook prison" you are bound
- Bruce Schneier About "Secure Boot"
- Bruce Schneier isn't a fan of "Secure Boot"
- Links 09/09/2025: Microsoft Mass Layoffs Again and "RTO" (Timed Like It Serves as a Distraction From the Mass Layoffs)
- Links for the day
- RMS Told Microsoft to Stop 'Secure Boot' (He Even Went There to Say That), But They Didn't Listen
- Dr. Stallman (RMS) assumed that speaking to sociopaths would work
- What Richard Stallman Told Me About 'Secure' Boot in 2012
- "if the user doesn't control the keys, then it's a kind of shackle"
- Those Who Helped Microsoft Weaponise "Secure Boot" Against GNU/Linux and BSDs Are Fleeing
- Microsofters doing what they do best: they evade accountability
- Simple is Better, Simplicity is Power
- That is "the advantage of having commodity GNU/Linux systems," an associate notes
- Much Ado About Nonsense
- Microsoft Lunduke is still all dramatisation and sensationalism
- Current Events in France
- It needs to dump Microsoft and other GAFAM (US) giants, move to Free software
- Links 09/09/2025: US-Korea Tensions and Meta Whistleblowers
- Links for the day
- Links 09/09/2025: “Torrents of Hate” and Political Crisis in France
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 09/09/2025: "Dedigitizing" and Forgejo on FreeBSD
- Links for the day
- Google News (Not Just Google Search) Lets Itself by Gamed by One Slopfarm - to the Point Almost Half of "Linux" News is Bot-Produced Plagiarism (LLM Slop With Slop Images)
- That says a lot about what Google thinks of quality, even in Google News
- Bill Gates-Funded Media Inadvertently Refutes the Microsoft Lie That in 2025 Microsoft Had Just Two Waves of Layoffs
- There were about 12 rounds of layoffs so far in 2025
- From theregister.co.uk to theregister.com (US) to The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives) and theregister.ai
- The best way to break this racket (or cycle of hype and harm) is to break the chains of funding
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) Culture of Censorship Necessitates More Speech
- The OSI bans dissent or people who merely point out that the OSI is abusive
- How to Reach Us Discreetly (Other Than Encrypted E-mail)
- We're still managing to maintain a 100% source protection record. We soon turn 19.
- LLMs Are Vastly Worse Than a Waste of Energy and the Externalities Are Huge
- Worse than just higher power bills for everybody
- LLMs Versus Search (Not Replacing Search But Engaging in DDoS Attacks Against Web Sites That Permit Searching)
- The state of the Web isn't just bad; it's utterly terrible
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 08, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, September 08, 2025
- The UEFI 9/11 - Part IX - Shunning Old Computers (in 2023 the Certificate Was Updated/Overridden, Underlying Aim May Be Herding/Forcing People to Get TPM and Other 'Novel' Restrictions)
- the "upgrade treadmill"
- Rumour: Second Wave of Microsoft Mass Layoffs in September to Commence Third Week of September
- That basically answers questions like, "Any specific date or time of the month?"
- If Your Machine Still Has "Secure Boot" Enabled, Then Microsoft Has a de Facto Kill Switch (Even If Your Machine Doesn't Have Windows and Never Had Windows)
- It is not incorrect to call UEFI 'secure boot' a "kill switch"
- Gemini Links 08/09/2025: Reality, ROOPHLOCH 2025, and Writing Another Gemini Client
- Links for the day
- Updating Firmware is Not the Solution But Only Additional Risk, Disable "Secure Boot" Today
- firmware blobs are buggy, secret, impossible to audit, and barely tested
- Microsoft Tim's DevClass (Part of The Register MS/Situation Publishing) is Full of Slop
- Looking at many sites that are full of slop images is becoming an eye sore and hallmark of text too likely generated by LLMs or 'assisted' (tainted) by them
- Microsoft Trying to Fake Demand for Slop. At What Cost?
- That's a giant demotion and broken promises
- Reddit is Corporate Propaganda
- To make matters worse, Reddit ousted many original moderators
- Jeff Geerling Shocked to Discover Many Metrics in YouTube Are Fake (His Audience Turns Out to be Much Smaller)
- Maybe self-host all videos, don't rely on Google's "FOMO" cheating (addiction based on false assumptions)
- Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant and Kryptonite/Garlic to Vampires
- Transparency (sometimes described by words like "Sunlight" or "Truth") is paramount
- The Register MS Uses Slop in Articles About Slop
- we are fairly certain it's slop or CG based on other people's work
- Visiting a Web Page or a Public URL Should be Safe, Predictable, and Benign
- It's probably too late to "fix" the Web
- The Register MS (Situation Publishing) is Paid to Spread Mindless Hype for the "Hey Hi" Ponzi Scheme and That's a Serious Problem
- "Sponsored by Zoom."
- Links 08/09/2025: Burger King Cracked, Cox v. Sony Analysed
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 08/09/2025: Socialist Computer Museum and GAFAM/ByteDance/TikTok-Dominated Net
- Links for the day
- Links 08/09/2025: Tim Crook Disappoints Apple Faithfuls and Zuckerberg Lies (Financial Fraud) for Cheeto King
- Links for the day
- EPO Workers Point Out that the EPO is Destroying the Planet Under the Guise of "Hey Hi" (It Also Grants Many Invalid Patents Illegally
- On 12 March and 16 June 2025, staff representation met with the administration in the Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in Munich
- Turn Off Microsoft's Restricted Boot ("Secure Boot")
- We're still running a series on this issue
- Social Control Media Sites Have Become Bot Farms (Not Limited to LLMs and Automation)
- linkedin.com was nothing but trouble and losses for Microsoft
- Deep in Debt With the Magnitude of Losses Quickly Growing, Microsoft "Open" "Hey Hi" Now Uses Broadcom for Vapourware, Pretending It'll Do OK Next Year
- At some stage it'll collapse
- You Can Tell Microsoft is in Trouble When Its Own Fans and Staff Blast it
- "Microsoft sinks billions into chasing artificial intelligence fads to hype up its share price."
- Multiple Undersea Cable Cuts and We're Still OK
- Microsoft customers experience problems
- Lawyers Who Think They Are Online Assassins Don't Deserve a Licence to Operate
- they've become a laughing stock in their "sector"
- Microsoft Windows Fell to 3.9% "Market Share" in Bahamas
- Based on statCounter
- How the European Union (EU) Fell Out of Love With Free/Libre Software
- Lots of bribery
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 07, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, September 07, 2025
- Gemini Links 07/09/2025: Scanner, Slop, and Chadobear
- Links for the day
- The UEFI 9/11 is 3 Days Away
- Nobody denies that bad things will happen
- Google Versus Journalism
- Google played a big role in the demise of news sites
- Gemini Links 07/09/2025: Advertising, Decentralized Archival, and Outsourcing to Bezos
- Links for the day
- Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Has Almost Gone Down to Zero, Nearly Totally Extinct in Geminispace, the Few Capsules Still Using It Are Spam/Dead/Stagnant
- This represents another decrease for Let's Encrypt; the last decrease was last week
- Not Much Left in News Cycles
- To be very clear, this does not describe "Linux" anything; it's true in just about every facet of news, except the paid-for fake "journalism" about "hey hi" (sites getting paid explicitly to maintain or rekindle hype)
- Trying to Silence Techrights Was a Huge Mistake
- Peter Thiel attacked a publisher for asserting, correctly, that he was gay. Now everyone knows it.
- Throwing Away "Old" Computers (Mozilla and Other Climate Deniers)
- Mozilla is not leftist
- The UEFI 9/11 - Part VIII - Denial of Service and Selling Us WSL (Windows) Instead of "Risky" (Prone by Breakage by Microsoft) GNU/Linux
- Restricted Boot (so-called 'SecureBoot') does not improve security. It is nothing but trouble. It's meant to trouble non-Windows users. In dual-boot setups, SecureBoot is a recipe for disaster because Microsoft keeps erasing or tampering with the boot sector, to paraphrase an associate
- Slop is Extremely Rare in Geminispace, Slop Images Are Unheard Of (Despite Images Being Supported)
- As long as Geminispace grows in terms of domains it's safe to predict the protocol will still be used in 2029 and hence Geminispace will turn 10
- Links 07/09/2025: Robodebt Class Action, Fines, and Copyright Settlement
- Links for the day
- Links 07/09/2025: Yle Impersonated in Social Control Media, Boat-Attacking Orcas, Midjourney Sued Again
- Links for the day
- Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Linux Journal, and the Serial Slopper
- Google won't tackle the issue because Google participates not only in relaying slop but also in generating lots of it
- Links 07/09/2025: Google Fines in EU and "Your Internet Access Is at Risk"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/09/2025: Little Brother and Corporate Theatre
- Links for the day
- Links 07/09/2025: More Harms of Slop and Anthropic's Nightmare Scenario (Huge Legal Liabilities for Slop)
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 06, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, September 06, 2025
