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
- Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
- The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
- For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
- Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
- Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
- Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
- How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
- A rough summary
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- Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
- It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
- When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
- how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
- Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
- The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
- The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
- Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
- 10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
- software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
- "Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
- Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
- Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
- Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
- Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
- We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
- Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
- Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
- Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
- very short
- Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
- Links for the day
- Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
- Links for the day
- Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
- Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
- Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
- Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
- FSF Turns 40
- We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
- Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
- Links for the day
- We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
- For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
- Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
- Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
- USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
- we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
- TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
- Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
- Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
- Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
- Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
- For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
- Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
- Google News is really bad
- Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
- I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
- Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
- Links for the day
- Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
- Links for the day
- FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
- It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
- Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
- Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
- They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
- Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
- Links for the day
- Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
- Links for the day
- Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
- Links for the day
- Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
- The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
- su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
- Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
- A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
- What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
- Microsoft is Losing Europe
- Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
- The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
- New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
- Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
- Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
- What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
- XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
- Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
- A day later he speaks in Sweden
- Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
- Links for the day
