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
- Two Risks to Companies: The Microsoft Culture and the Microsoft Tools
- Novell was killed by a form of "social engineering" by Microsoft
- It's Hard to Trust People Who Worked - Not Only Those Who Still Work - at Microsoft
- Bryan Lunduke is just what people would call an "arsehole of a person"
- Links 06/07/2025: Climate Change and "The Right to Criticise"
- Links for the day
- The Mainstream Media Took 4 Days to Realise Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan and Fired Everybody
- We estimate that Microsoft has had about 29,000 layoffs since January
- “Twibel” Actions Against Comedians (and Why It's a Truly Low Blow)
- they try to make up in quantities for a lack of merit or quality
-
- [Video] "Copyleft Isn't a Bug."
- "Copyleft isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. GNU GPL forced the world to treat code like a public good."
- Being in Social Control Media Means Exposing Oneself to Heckling
- Richard Stallman does not (either himself or directly) post to any social control media
- Links 06/07/2025: Airlines Perils, Scams, and Breaches
- Links for the day
- For the Second Time, Bryan Lunduke From Microsoft is Siccing Racist Trolls and Vandals at Me
- You're only reinforcing the point we made yesterday
- Links 06/07/2025: End to End Encryption at Risk, Reuters Twitter ("X") Account Withheld in India
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 06/07/2025: Tinylog and Certification Rotation
- Links for the day
- PCLinuxOS Sites Coming Back, Gradually
- let's just be patient
- Social Control Media, Even If Based on Free Software, Still Has Many Problems
- a distraction from what actually mattered and still matters
- IBM is Not Your Master
- IBM makes friends with people who exclude the majority of the population: women
- Help Fund the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
- If you have some dollars to spare, go support the FSF
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 05, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, July 05, 2025
- A Short History of Attacks on Techrights (and Boycott Novell Before That)
- good opportunity to tell again the story of several (not all) attempts to silence us
- Leadership in Free Software
- Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.
- Linux Foundation Apparently Flirting With Slop (Marketing by LLM-Generated SPAM)
- The Web is in a really bad state!
- COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
- A few months later we created our very own IRC network
- Gemini Links 05/07/2025: Negative Questions and 'Touching Grass' (Going Outside)
- Links for the day
- Links 05/07/2025: Dalai Lama Succession as 90th Birthday Approaches, 40 deg C in China
- Links for the day
- Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
- Links for the day
- How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
- Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
- Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
- "[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
- Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
- no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
- Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
- There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
- The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
- X.Org Server is alive and well
- Rewriting Things in Rust
- How far would you go?
- In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
- Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
- Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
- Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
- Monopolies and Scalping
- Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
- Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
- "August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
- What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
- You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
- Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
- LLM slop disguised as news
- Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
- Links for the day
- Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
- Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
- Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
- Via the GNU Web site this week
- Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
- Links for the day
- Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
- We'll write about this for a long time to come
- Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
- Slop videos aren't a new thing
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
- The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
- There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
- What Digital Independence Means
- Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
- NVidia is a Bubble
- they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
- Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
- any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
- Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
- Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead
