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
- The Problem is Not Technology, the Problem is Really Bad Things Sold or Imposed as "Tech" (Like a Religion Built Around Technology)
- Don't hate technology, hate the corporations that abuse it to promote coercion, exploitation etc.
- Resisting IBM and EPO Corruption
- Rise up against EPO dictatorship next week
- Where Slop Meets Ghostwriting: It's a False Analogy
- It's a false analogy
- Slop Technica: Ars Technica Seems Like Repeat Offender, a Part-Time Slopfarm
- The culprits are repeat offenders, but the publisher will never admit this in public
- Where Microsoft's Bing Cannot Even Reach 1% "Market Share"
- Looking at "I" countries
- Links 16/02/2026: Barack Obama Responds to Racist Cheeto and Benjamin Mako Hill Studies Online Communities
- Links for the day
-
- EPO "Productivity" Will Fall Off a Cliff If Examiners Stick to the European Patent Convention (EPC) and Follow the Real Rules
- The EPO's "Cocaine Communication Manager" would hate to see the next "productivity" metrics
- Links 17/02/2026: Why OpenClaw is Very Sleazy and Ars Technica Exposed as Hub of LLM Slop (Credibility Destroyed Overnight)
- Links for the day
- Benj Edwards (Ars Technica) Used Fake Articles to Promote Ponzi Scheme for Conde Nast and Its Client (Marketing)
- What Ars Technica and Conde Nast do here helps defraud the general public
- Only One in 50 Saudis Would Use Microsoft for Search, Almost Same as Would Use Russia's Yandex
- If statCounter is to be trusted
- Microsoft's "AI" Concerns Are All Indian (or Low-Paid Workers Who Work Extra Hours Unpaid)
- portraying charlatans and frauds like they're some kind of visionaries and luminaries
- Microsoft Turned Bing Into Censorship Machine of China, But Bing Is Pegged at a Mere 2% in Asia, Yandex is Bigger
- Expect many Bing layoffs some time soon (like in past years)
- Just Like The Register MS, Conde Nast's Ars Technica Has Just Publicly Admitted That It Published Fake Articles (Slop) Made by LLMs About Serious Subjects
- Conde Nast might shut Ars Technica down to escape the bad publicity/association
- Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Way Too Slow to Respond to Financial Fraud at Law Firms, in Effect Helping Those Law Firms Defraud Many More People (Fleecing Clients)
- Who will hold the SRA accountable for this?
- Techrights Became a Hub for News That IBM/Red Hat Doesn't Want You to See (and Pays Mainstream Media to Distract From)
- the more viciously the notorious organisation attacks the reporter, the greater the interest in what the reporter has to say
- EPO's Central Staff Committee on Fourth Technical Meeting, Two Days Before First of (At Least) 4 Winter Strikes at the Second-Largest European Institution
- “future orientations on the salary adjustment procedure”
- IBM's Collapse Continues, Half of EU Countries to Have Mass Layoffs, "IBM Clearly Disinvests From Europe" Says IBM European Works Council
- Recent publication
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 16, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, February 16, 2026
- Gemini Links 17/02/2026: Alpenglow Industries' Closure and Gemini Server Issues
- Links for the day
- The Southern California Linux Expo (“SCALE”) or SCALE 23x Becomes Microsoft
- It's not supporting the event, it is buying it.
- Microsoft to Focus on Name-Dropping Buzzwords to Distract From Declining Business, IBM RAs (Layoffs) With Staff Stack-Ranked
- Calling everything cloud or reclassifying as "AI"
- Another EPO Strike One Week From Now, Local Staff Committee Munich to Discuss It This Week
- Campinos MIA while Office staff goes on strike at least 4 times
- Gemini Links 16/02/2026: Task Completed by Avoidance and "Playing Again With Akkoma"
- Links for the day
- Happy Birthday (or Anniversary) to SoylentNews
- "Happy Birthday SoylentNews"
- Techrights' Architecture
- Stability is the main goal
- IBM Reduces the Thresholds for Acceptance (and the Salaries)
- Are chatbots good enough as IBM staff?
- When It Comes to Rust, Keep All the Eyes on the Ball (Technical and Legal Perils, Sustainability Questions)
- It's not about security or politics
- Linux Foundation Continues Falling Off a Cliff in Geminispace
- Gemini Protocol will turn 7 this summer
- Links 16/02/2026: cURL’s Daniel Stenberg Asserts That Slop is DDoSing Free Software, But Still Uses a Plagiarism and GPL-Violating Blender (Microsoft GitHub)
- Links for the day
- The Techrights Community Never Needed Money, Only Goodwill
- We accomplish things by a track record of suppressed facts
- "AboutCode" is a Microsoft Proxy and Microsoft's Acquisition of the OSI Advances Via OSI Moles
- presenting direct evidence anybody can verify
- Social Control Media is Just a Digital Weapon
- Social control media is not social and not media
- They Will Call Smart People "Luddites"
- Is society "seeing the light"?
- Microsoft Amutable Already Reveals That Its Focus Is Not Linux, It'll Promote "Remote Attestation"
- This is basically an attack on Software Freedom, even if they toss around the brand "Linux"
- More People in Chad Move to GNU/Linux
- Last year we began to see GNU/Linux rising there - a trend which continues this year
- Dr. Andy Farnell on How Universities and Culture of Education Got Crushed by "Technofascist Nightmare"
- Farnell says he "already soft-quit in [his] mind"
- Debt of Broadcom Grew by More Than 50%, Broadcom is Deeper in Debt Than Google
- Expect many more cuts
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 15, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, February 15, 2026
- Links 15/02/2026: Slop, Politics, and Gemini
- Links for the day
- Small is Beautiful (in Cascading Style Sheets/Inheritance Rules)
- If done correctly, pages can take a tenth of a second to fully load
- Microsoft Has Fallen to New Lows in Hong Kong This Year
- That Windows "market share" falls there is perhaps expected
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.5 Million Dollars This Winter, Almost 50% More Than in All of 2024 Combined
- Verbal advocacy goes a long way
- Spread the Word About EPO Strikes and Patent Injustices in Europe
- Corruption in Europe is a real thing
- The Register MS is Promoting Slop, Promotion Connected to Microsoft (Trying to Replace Judges With Microsoft)
- marketing spun as "science"
- He Did Not Have Enough Souls
- A lot of the subjects we cover here no other site dares touch
- "Mix Vale" is a Slopfarm
- 3 "articles" about "ubuntu"
- Links 15/02/2026: Roy Medvedev Dead at 100, Rise of "YouTube Politicians"
- Links for the day
- Links 15/02/2026: How Alexey Navalny Was Executed by Putin, Erdogan Helping Iran
- Links for the day
- IBM Fedora Keeps Promoting Slop, Red Hat Has Been Turned Into Chaff and Trash to Help IBM's Stock (With "AI" Storytelling)
- Red Hat's Fedora is an old brand (20+ years). It no longer stands for what it meant to people in the Fedora Core days (I was a Fedora user back then).
- What IBM Said About 2026 Layoffs and What's Happening in Practice
- t'll leave IBM at the very bottom, in due course (customers will notice something profound has changed)
- Gemini Links 15/02/2026: "Already Midway February" and Loadbars Remembered
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 14, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, February 14, 2026
