See Lawrence R. Goldfarb (Wikipedia)

Summary: An important reminder of the role Microsoft played in SCO’s massive (multi-billion), never-ending attacks on the legitimacy and the cost of Linux

IS the SCO saga “over”? That’s what they told us half a decade ago, yet today’s (and yesterday’s) headlines [1-4] suggest this is definitely it, no matter what happens next. Novell was actually “over” a long time before SCO was truly “over” (“don’t make me over,” it perpetually insists and shouts at the judges, like Dianne Warwick while throwing her now-famous fit at Burt Bacharach and Hal David), unless one counts the “Novell” brand which was carried forward, or abandoned efforts/teams such as Mono/Ximian, which based on this news from Phoronix is already being used for E.E.E. (this time involving Vulkan), shortly after Microsoft tied the knot. Don’t ever forget Microsoft’s true colours. The company hates GNU/Linux with a great passion; it just tries to hide it while working to undermine GNU/Linux. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Win for Open Source: SCO Court Case against Linux Hits End of Road

   The case was opened in 2003, when SCO filed a $1B claim against IBM. The suit alleged that IBM had inserted some code from Unix, over which SCO claimed ownership, into the Linux kernel.

2. SCO vs. IBM looks like it’s over for good

   The long-running SCO vs. IBM case looks like it might just be over.

   A new filing (PDF) scooped up by the good folks at Groklaw sees both SCO and IBM agree to sign off on two recent decisions in which SCO’s arguments advancing its claims to own parts of Unix were slapped down by the US District Court.

   As The Register reads the PDF we’ve linked to above, and our informal legal counsel concurs, the new document describes IBM and SCO both signing off on the recent court orders. Those orders left SCO without a legal argument to stand on.

   The new filing also points out that SCO remains bankrupt and has “has de minimis financial resources beyond the value of the claims on which the Court has granted summary judgment for IBM.”

   Or in plain English, SCO is broke and the only asset it possess of any value is its claims against IBM, and now it doesn’t even have those because it just lost a court case about them. That leaves SCO in no position to carry on.

   “Accordingly,” the new filing continues, “the disposition of SCO’s appeal is the practical course most likely to conserve both judicial and private resources.” That’s the legal sense of “disposition”, by the way, so what the document’s saying is that SCO giving up its appeal is most likely to stop the courts spending any more time or energy on this matter. Courts don’t like wasting resources. So this is both parties explaining that wrapping things up now is a desirable thing.

3. Gentoo Choice, Awful Fedora 24, Debian Firefox

   Today in Linux news the Ubuntu ZFS controversy isn’t quite settled after all. Fedora’s Adam Williamson today blogged, ” Lots of stuff is busted. We are aware of this, and fixing it. Hold onto your hats.” Richard Freeman reminded folks the systemd disagreements aren’t over either and Debian has finally stopped renaming Firefox to Iceweasel. Dedoimedo said today that Mepis derivative MX-15 is on the “highway to rad” and Christine Hall signed SCO’s death warrant.

4. SCO Is Undeniably and Reliably Dead

   It appears as if SCO’s case against IBM, which began as a blustering tornado back in 2003, finally died with a whimper last week. The death notice came in the form of what is essentially a one page agreement between SCO and IBM which calls “for certification of the entry of final judgment on the Court’s orders concerning all of SCO’s claims….”

TECHRIGHTS has been a rather prominent longtime critic of UEFI. We even got invited to speak to the top executives behind UEFI, involving several people on a conference call. They were hoping to silence/suppress my criticism by speaking to me for about an hour, but they didn’t have anything substantial to say in order for me to change my mind. In fact, they only revealed other issues (throughout the conversation) which I later wrote about. The Wiki has plenty of details about that and it also covers examples or remote bricking of PCs (via UEFI). Truly nasty if not malicious, too.

“Stuff like UEFI also gives governments stricter controls over people (like dissidents).”There is a newly-discovered issue involving systemd and EFI/UEFI. This has shown up in several prominent online forums and also in bug reports for almost a week (or longer). I had mentioned it online for a while, but only earlier today did I decide I have enough of a confirmation regarding this severe problem. It is now mentioned in news sites, too [1,2,3], so I wanted to very quickly remark on it (due to lack of time), noting that here again we have an example of remote bricking by means of UEFI — a subject that the NSA previously warned about (accusing China, warning that it had attempted to do something similar).

Don’t accept UEFI. Like DRM, TPM and many other malicious ‘features’, it is intended to give corporations control over the users, rather than enable the users to control their computers better. Stuff like UEFI also gives governments stricter controls over people (like dissidents). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. In A UEFI World, “rm -rf /” Can Brick Your System

   Running rm -rf / on any UEFI Linux distribution can potentially perma-brick your system.

   As a public service announcement, recursively removing all of your files from / is no longer recommended. On UEFI distributions by default where EFI variables are accessible via /sys, this can now mean trashing your UEFI implementation.

2. Running a single delete command in Linux can permanently brick some laptops

   It’s fairly stupid to run such a command, but usually not destructive to anything but the Linux installation. However, as it turns out, on MSI laptops it’s possible to completely wipe the EFI boot partition from inside Linux.

3. Running “rm -rf /” Is Now Bricking UEFI Based Linux Systems

   Running rm -rf / on any UEFI Linux distro can potentially perma-brick your system, Windows PCs also vulnerable

Publicado en Debian, GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft at 7:54 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Sumario: Palabras de advertencia acerca de la dirección tomada por la Fundación Linux, donde el impacto de Micro$oft ha crecido considerablemente y el rol de la comunidad ha dismínuido o completamente decimado.

Hoy es un día especial. Es día del Pinguino, pero poniendo aparte Linux y su mascota, no hay mucho que celebrar por que la Fundación Linux se esta pudriendo. La Fundación de Software Libre FSF es para la Fundación Linux lo que astronomía (ciencia) es para la astrología (negocio basado en seudo ciencia) y habiendo tratado de BORRAR GNU FROM LA HISTORIA^* (fenomeno común), la Fundacion Linux ahora borra e ignora el rol que individuos han asumido en el desarollo del sistema. Intentamos o por lo menos guíamos a pensar que la kernel, Linux, está silenciosamente ´conquistada´ por un consorcio de corporaciones, muchos de los cuales tienen LEALTADES MIXTAS (no sólo a Linux).

“Intentamos o por lo menos guíamos a pensar que la kernel, Linux, está silenciosamente ´conquistada´ por un consorcio de corporaciones, muchos de los cuales tienen LEALTADES MIXTAS (no sólo a Linux).”Cubrimiento de la OEP nos ha impedido de cubrir acerca la Fundación de Linux como solíamos hacer, incluyendo PAGOS DE MICROSOFT, SERVICIOS PARA MICROSOFT, y abandono de las obligaciones del GPL por que éstos fueron trás los ejecutivos de Microsoft que manejan VMWare.

Matthwe Garred sugirió un punto importante y preguntó: ¨¿La Fundación Linux abandonó cualquier semblanza de comunidad representativa porque tiene MIEDO DE LAS OBLIGACIONES DEL GPL (Licencia Pública General)?¨

Ya hay cubrimiento proveniente de la denuncia originaria [1], que ha sido mencionada en muchos lugares hasta ahora, e.g [2, 3]. Hemos recibido la evidencia de arriba que sirve a reforzare esas denuncias que la Fundación Linux sigue navegando a cualquier lugar donde este el dinero (compañías que tratan de controlar o dominar Linux). La Fundación Linux NO representa Linux users (OSDL difícilmente pretendió hacerlo) pero muchas compañías de hardware que quieren influenciar el/los proceso[s] desarrollador. La Fundación Linux abandonó las obligaciones de la GPL por el caso de VMware. Esto es un buen ejemplo de E.E.E. El último disfraz de open de Microsoft, por instancia, le ayudó a obtener control/dominio a costo de V8, en el mismo modo que un pie dentro de la Fundación Linux (con la ayuda de Novell) dejo a Microsoft injectar código violatorio a la GPL dentro de la kernel (Linux), promoviendo el PROPRIETARIO Hyper-V a costa de FOSS hypervisors.

“Hemos recibido la evidencia de arriba que sirve a reforzare esas denuncias que la Fundación Linux sigue navegando a cualquier lugar donde es te el dinero (compañías que tratan de controlar o dominar Linux).”NO HAY ¨Nuevo¨ Microsoft. ¨Microsoft no añadió apoyo al OpenDocumente Format para iOS y Mac OS X,¨ por instancia. Microsoft sólo quiere PROMOVER SU CANDADO PROPIETARIO. Eso es lo que Microsoft hace dentro de Android, dentro de Linux, incluso dentro de Debian estos días. Hay por lo menos un empleado de Microsoft infiltrado dentro de Debian,¨ iphk nos advirtió, citándo esta página de Microsoft. ¨José Miguel Parrella,¨ dice es un ¨desarrollador de Debian y miembro del equipo de estrategía (recuerden E.E.E) ´abierta´de Microsoft.¨ -¿Cómo puedes combinarse lo LIBRE con lo PROPIETARIO, ESCLAVIZADOR´?- Recuerden que la Fundación Linux está llena de ¨antiguos¨ empleados de Microsoft), incluso en posiciones de gerencia. Debian en luz de algún acuerdo con Microsfot (no tuvimos tiempo de cubrir) debe estar al cuidado ya que esta sucediendo un E.E.E. La Fundación Linux también esta en riesgo de convertirse obsoleta (a nuestros usuarios boycoteemos sus certficaciones), (perdida de apoyo público) porque públicamente ¨APOYA LAS CORPORACIONES NO A LA COMUNIDAD,¨ para citar el títular de hoy de Susan Linton, fundadora de Tux Machines. Para convertir a la Fundación Linux un fuerte jugador a favor de copyleft (e.g. GPL obligaciones) ayuden a elegir a la FSF- y SFLC Karn Sandler. Ella está postulando a la Fundación Linux Board de Directores. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Linux Foundation quietly drops community representation

   The Linux Foundation is an industry organisation dedicated to “promoting, protecting and standardising Linux and open source software”[1]. The majority of its board is chosen by the member companies – 10 by platinum members (platinum membership costs $500,000 a year), 3 by gold members (gold membership costs $100,000 a year) and 1 by silver members (silver membership costs between $5,000 and $20,000 a year, depending on company size). Up until recently individual members ($99 a year) could also elect two board members, allowing for community perspectives to be represented at the board level.

2. Garrett: Linux Foundation Says Let Them Eat Cake

   Matthew Garrett, kernel contributor and social activist, today posted of his discovery of a little change at the Linux Foundation. The foundation left regular users and individual developers behind for large corporate sponsors years ago, but today Garrett said they made it official. One little clause was removed from the by-laws, but it removes so much more from the foundation.

3. Linux Foundation shows it backs corporates, not community

   The Linux Foundation has given its clearest indication yet that it caters to corporates rather than the community, by making it impossible for community representatives to be elected to its board.

____
^* In a very recent Linux Foundation video, GNU is only mentioned as a joke (“they make me say it”).

Summary: Words of warning about the direction taken by the Linux Foundation, where Microsoft impact has grown and community role has been diminished or completely decimated

TODAY is a special day. It’s Penguin Awareness Day, but putting aside the Linux and the Tux mascot, there’s not much to celebrate because the Linux Foundation reveals signs of rot. The FSF is to the Linux Foundation what astronomy (science) is to astrology (big business around pseudo-science) and having already attempted to delete GNU from history^* (a common phenomenon), the Linux Foundation now deletes the role that individuals played in the development of the system. We’re meant or at least led to thinking that the kernel, Linux, was quietly ‘taken over’ by a consortium of corporations, many of which have mixed loyalties (not just to Linux).

“We’re meant or at least led to thinking that the kernel, Linux, was quietly ‘taken over’ by a consortium of corporations, many of which have mixed loyalties (not just to Linux).”EPO coverage has prevented us from covering as much about the Linux Foundation as we used to, including payments from Microsoft, services to Microsoft, and abandonment of GPL enforcement efforts because GPL enforcers went after a Microsoft executives-run VMware.

Matthew Garrett raised an important point and asked: “Did the Linux Foundation just drop all semblance of community representation because it’s afraid of GPL enforcement?”

There is already coverage stemming from the original rant [1], which has been mentioned by several news sites so far, e.g. [2,3]. We have received the above evidence which serves to reinforce these claims that the Linux Foundation keeps drifting away to wherever the big money is (usually companies that try to control or dominate Linux). The Linux Foundation does not represent Linux users (OSDL hardly ever pretended to do so) but mostly hardware companies that want to influence the development process/es. The Linux Foundation dumped support for GPL enforcement because of VMware. This is a good example of E.E.E. The latest Microsoft openwashing, for instance, reportedly helps it grab control/foothold at V8′s expense in the same way that a foot inside the Linux Foundation (with Novell’s helping hand) let Microsoft inject GPL-violating code into the kernel, promoting the proprietary Hyper-V at the expense of FOSS hypervisors.

“We have received the above evidence which serves to reinforce these claims that the Linux Foundation keeps drifting away to wherever the big money is (usually companies that try to control or dominate Linux).”There is no ‘new’ Microsoft. “Microsoft have not added support for OpenDocument Format to iOS and Mac OS X,” for instance. Microsoft only wants to promote proprietary Microsoft lock-in. That’s what Microsoft does inside Android, inside Linux, and even inside Debian these days. “There’s at least one Microsoft staff inside Debian,” iophk warned us, citing this page from Microsoft. “Jose Miguel Parrella,” it says, is “a Debian Developer and member of Microsoft’s Open Source Strategy team.” Remember that also the Linux Foundation is full of ‘former’ Microsoft staff, even at relatively high positions (like management). Debian, in light of some recent agreement with Microsoft (we didn’t find time to cover it), should definitely watch out as there’s E.E.E. going on. The Linux Foundation too is now at risk of becoming obsolete (loss of support from the public) because it publicly shows that it metaphorically “Says Let Them Eat Cake,” to quote today’s headline from Susan Linton, founder of Tux Machines. Sam Varghese says the Linux Foundation “backs corporates, not community,” to quote his own headline (below). To make the Linux Foundation a strong player for copyleft (e.g. GPL enforcement) help elect the FSF- and SFLC-connected Karen Sandler. She’s running for the Linux Foundation Board of Directors. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Linux Foundation quietly drops community representation

   The Linux Foundation is an industry organisation dedicated to “promoting, protecting and standardising Linux and open source software”[1]. The majority of its board is chosen by the member companies – 10 by platinum members (platinum membership costs $500,000 a year), 3 by gold members (gold membership costs $100,000 a year) and 1 by silver members (silver membership costs between $5,000 and $20,000 a year, depending on company size). Up until recently individual members ($99 a year) could also elect two board members, allowing for community perspectives to be represented at the board level.

2. Garrett: Linux Foundation Says Let Them Eat Cake

   Matthew Garrett, kernel contributor and social activist, today posted of his discovery of a little change at the Linux Foundation. The foundation left regular users and individual developers behind for large corporate sponsors years ago, but today Garrett said they made it official. One little clause was removed from the by-laws, but it removes so much more from the foundation.

3. Linux Foundation shows it backs corporates, not community

   The Linux Foundation has given its clearest indication yet that it caters to corporates rather than the community, by making it impossible for community representatives to be elected to its board.

____
^* In a very recent Linux Foundation video, GNU is only mentioned as a joke (“they make me say it”).

THIS post is not a personal attack, so we shall refrain from naming names (no direct reference to individuals). This post isn’t about news either, just some rants that infiltrated so-called ‘news’ sites because drama ‘sells’.

It all started with the original rant [1] from one among many thousands of Linux developers (she didn’t even leave her employer, just changed projects to focus on). This was picked up by few sites the following day and became a topic of discussion in LWN [2], which is close to LKML (people/subscribers overlap). Linux media then picked it up [3-7], followed by the corporate media [8-12]. Some Microsoft boosters were all over it as this was a rare opportunity to characterise Linux as rude and condescending (as if this never happens in proprietary software, they just hide it better in their culture of infamous secrecy, no public mailing lists either).

This in itself was bad enough in the publicity sense and then a longtime vocal supporter of feminism added more fuel to the fire [13], causing some stir in Linux media [14], having done this against Intel before. Intel is the former person’s employer by the way; the company whom he decided to effectively boycott over chauvinism — a problem that the former person seems to not even want to address at all because that’s where her large salary comes from. Double standard much?

This outburst against Linux has nothing to do with women’s rights or manners. There is no threat of violence (as once alleged) and there is no language directly offensive to women (no more than it can be offensive to men). Some people have too thin a skin, especially where free speech is highly valued.

The latter person is a Microsoft apologist (based on his own words) and the fact that he technically supports UEFI (i.e. attacking computing freedom) is why Torvalds famously lashed out and used sexual connotations.

The latter person is provocative, confrontational (even against former employers like Canonical), and foul-mouthed (look how he behaves on sites like Twitter), so who is he to use ‘brutal’ culture as a pretext for forking Linux? Yes, large news sites now frame this as Linux being forked [15,16], as if this will ever truly fly. It’s just a cycle of provocation, resulting in little more than harmful publicity, e.g. stereotyping and reinforced stigma for Linux. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Closing a door

2. Sharp: Closing a door

3. Sarah Sharp: “I’m not a Linux kernel developer any more”

4. Sarah Sharp Quits as a Linux Kernel Developer, Blames the Toxic Behavior of the Community

5. Sarah Sharp Steps Down As Linux Kernel Developer

6. Kernel Anniversary Marked by “Without Linux” and Resignation

   Today marks 24 years since Linux Torvalds released version 0.01 of the Linux kernel to the benefit of humanity. The day was marred by the resignation of Sarah Sharp saying, “I am no longer a part of the Linux kernel community” due to “blunt, rude, or brutal” communication. The Linux Foundation today announced a new video series titled World Without Linux that will highlight the vast ecosystem spawned from that original 10,239 lines of code.

7. Linux kernel developer Sarah Sharp quits over bad culture in LKML

8. Linux kernel dev Sarah Sharp quits, citing ‘brutal’ communications style

9. Linux kernel dev who asked Linus Torvalds to stop verbal abuse quits over verbal abuse

10. ​Linux developer who took on Linus Torvalds over abuse quits ‘toxic’ kernel community

11. Linux: Is Sarah Sharp a Social Justice Warrior?

12. Key Linux geekette walks over community abuse

13. Going my own way

14. Another Longtime Linux Developer Looks To Distance Himself From The Kernel Community

    A day after Sarah Sharp formally announced she’s stepping away from Linux kernel development due to the arguably toxic community, well known kernel developer Matthew Garrett announced he too is planning to cease his personal contributions to the upstream Linux kernel.

15. Matthew Garrett Forks the Linux Kernel

    Just like Sarah Sharp, Linux developer Matthew Garrett has gotten fed up with the unprofessional development culture surrounding the kernel. “I remember having to deal with interminable arguments over the naming of an interface because Linus has an undying hatred of BSD securelevel, or having my name forever associated with the deepthroating of Microsoft because Linus couldn’t be bothered asking questions about the reasoning behind a design before trashing it,” Garrett writes. He has chosen to go his own way, and has forked the Linux kernel and added patches that implement a BSD-style securelevel interface. Over time it is expected to pick up some of the power management code that Garrett is working on, and we shall see where it goes from there.

16. Matthew Garrett Leaves Linux Kernel and Forks It

    Now, another Linux kernel developer has decided to move away from the project. Matthew Garrett has been in the news a lot this past year, but surprisingly, not for the Linux kernel. He’s been a constant critic of Canonical IP policy, and he has criticized the company more than once. In fact, he’s a rather well-known kernel developer, and he had his fair share of disputes with Linus Torvalds. Unlike Sarah, he made his reasons a lot more clear.

Summary: The most infamous Microsoft mole inside Free/Open Source software (FOSS) lands right inside the Linux Foundation

Microsoft is actively attacking Linux (example from the past hour), but some in the Linux Foundation are willfully blind to it. They also ignore, at their own peril, Microsoft’s track record of entryism.

We were extremely disappointed to learn that the Linux Foundation-linked Cloud Foundry Foundation had put a Microsoft mole in charge, repeating a similar mistake from last year. This one is actually a lot worse because Nicolas (Neela) Jacques did not work as a mole/infiltrator for Microsoft but as actual staff.

“This enables Microsoft to exercise influence in the Linux Foundation and also makes it hard for the Foundation to openly criticise Microsoft.”Several press release copies were thrown at the wires for propaganda’s sake to announce this mole’s appointment and Microsoft fan sites, in addition to Microsoft boosters like Gavin Clarke, took advantage of it to openwash Microsoft and portray Microsoft as a friend of Linux. How sick is that?

Other coverage we have come across was rather shallow as it did nothing to highlight criticism, which was widespread when the mole (Ramji) worked for Microsoft. We wrote several dozens of articles about it.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has disappointedly enough been grooming this Microsoft mole and didn’t know him well enough to spell his name correctly (misspelled in 4 places). If he cannot even spell a 5-letter surname, then we doubt he knows to what extent the mole has been damaging FOSS. Vaughan-Nichols, moreover, still gives too much credit to Microsoft for pretending to be Open Source while it’s actually attacking FOSS. From his article:

The Cloud Foundry Foundation was created a year ago to form an open-source industry consortium to back Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) project written in Ruby and Go. It was then reorganized in December as a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project. It operates under a system of open governance by open-source experts from founding Platinum Members EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Pivotal, SAP, and VMware.

If the Linux Foundation can trust people from a criminal company (Microsoft) and a weapons company (BEA Systems), then we truly worry about its judgment. This enables Microsoft to exercise influence in the Linux Foundation and also makes it hard for the Foundation to openly criticise Microsoft. Zemlin blesses this choice of Ramji, which makes him not just an observer of this worrisome move. █

Summary: Tuxera heralds Microsoft’s tax era in Android and Linux; thus it should be left to rot

AFTER Microsoft’s crude patent attack on users of FAT such as TomTom (some surrendered and paid Microsoft, but TomTom took it public and into the courtroom) an incognito company called “Tuxera” made a pact with Microsoft to help spread the patent trap. There is now this press release from Tuxera, once again targeting Linux and Android with proprietary file systems:

Tuxera Inc., the market leader in file systems, streaming and network storage technologies, today released Tuxera Flash File System for Linux and Android, which is optimized to run on flash storages such as eMMC and SD. Tuxera Flash File System is based on Tuxera’s widely deployed and robust file system technologies with special flash optimization and extended features.

We strongly urge everyone — including technology companies — to avoid Tuxera. The company now acts mostly as a Microsoft proxy, helping Microsoft to derive revenue from GNU/Linux and Android (Microsoft tries doing that in some other ways too right now). Microsoft does not own Linux and has contributed nothing to it, except perhaps litigation, muckraking, and extortion. Paying even a dime to Tuxera basically helps Microsoft crush its opposition.

Privately, going a year back, Techrights and its community of readers silently fought a battle (over E-mail) with Tuxera over GPL violations. The Conservancy got involved too. We never wrote an article about it, but our suspicion of Tuxera certainly grew at the time. Tuxera is not a Free software player but a parasite. █

Summary: Canon and Microsoft sign a patent deal which relates to patents on FAT file systems and impacts some of Canon’s products, potentially Linux products as well (Canon makes drivers for Linux but does not develop products with Android or GNU/Linux just yet)

While we are unaware of any Android- or Linux-based products from Canon, the company does deliver drivers for FOSS platforms, especially since under a decade ago (we covered this quite often at the time of a turnaround). Therefore it is regretful to learn about FAT patents, which were disgraced by entities and people including Torvalds (there is prior art and TomTom never pushed the case to the end), are used to tax Canon products or legitimise FAT patents.

Linux-centric sites hardly paid attention to it last week, but someone in IRC told us about it. Looking it up very quickly we found Microsoft’s booster Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet saying: “Today’s patent agreement isn’t the first forged by the two companies. Canon previously licensed Microsoft exFAT file system technology for an undisclosed amount.”

Sometimes companies pay for it via Microsoft partners such as Tuxera, but sometimes there are deals like this one. The OIN’s CEO told us over the telephone that Microsoft has been using FAT patents while calling them “Linux-related” or something along those line in the case of LG and maybe Samsung also (Samsung’s deal seems to have been broader than that the second time around).

Nikon's deal with Microsoft was quite different and the booster correctly pointed out: “Today’s agreement also is not part of Microsoft’s ongoing campaign to convince companies using Linux, Android and ChromeOS to license its patents. Nikon announced an Android-related patent licensing deal with Microsoft in February 2013.”

This is not entirely true because the deal practically serves to legitimise exFAT, which is a common attack vector on embedded Linux. The post from the booster (hogwash of sorts) attracts comments from Microsoft sceptics, who know a lot better what Microsoft has been up to. There are comments such as: “Do we need a repeat of FAT? If I see a product’s filesystem using exFAT I will return it.”

Another person says: “The fact the the US Supreme Court recently re-addressed software patents is a move in the positive direction, even though it was not a large move. While much damage has already been done since these huge giants like Microsoft and IBM already have an enormous software patent portfolio, at least there is hope in future software patent releases. Eventually, technology will advance forward and the current software patent portfolios will probably start to become stale, at which point I can see the general public begin to feel the advantages if we make the right decisions today moving forward. But, we must end the monopolies that this huge companies get with their enormous patent portfolios. The trend in software patents granted within the past 30 years or so is staggering, just do some searches on this subject as it is well worth the reads. My hope is that we don’t continue to make the same mistakes moving forward.”

Canon has many patents on physical and mechanical or optical things like lenses. Microsoft has mostly software patents, which may be utterly worthless in the eyes of SCOTUS, as opposed to the USPTO that granted them without scrutiny. The USPTO has just become even more zealous about patents and it approves almost every patent application, even though SCOTUS deems many of those patents too abstract to be patentable (patent lawyers don't quite agree).

Carl Erickson, the “co-founder and president of Atomic Object, a software design and development company founded in 2001,” (based on his introduction) says that “Investors in software startups need to understand that such companies are unlikely to have strong IP protection through patents. Instead, investors should look for evidence of engaged, delighted users, significant market share or the potential for rapid growth, exclusive relationships or special market channels. For a software startup and their investors, these will beat patent pending, any day.”

His whole analysis, however, sometimes (in the text) claims that patents too are needed, with phrases such as:

As I wrote in my last post, protecting your intellectual property isn’t just about patents. It’s important for companies to ensure they own the copyright on their software.

Copyright protects a particular expression, patents protect an idea. The nature of software is such that an idea can be implemented in many different ways, in many different languages, and therefore patent protection on an idea is potentially legitimate and important. So when should you worry about a software patent?

If you’re confused by software patents, you’re not alone. While our legal and business structures will eventually adapt, technology, as usual, is moving faster, and the results aren’t always good or predictable. A recent Supreme Court decision didn’t radically alter the status quo, but reinforced a trend away from some of the sillier past decisions.

Software patents should be dragged to courts and defeated there. There is a valuable precedent now. All these FAT patent deals (Microsoft has been signing them for years) may be as valuable as estate on the Mars. █

• Tux3 Will Likely Soon Be Added To The Linux Kernel

  The Tux3 author intends to publish his Tux3 patches to the kernel mailing list in the next week or two with the intent of mainlining the file-system into the Linux kernel. There’s still some features to add and bugs to work through, but Phillips is now at a stage where he’s comfortable in seeing all of the code mainlined into the Linux kernel. He also hopes that by being in the mainline kernel will be an up-tick of interest and development support for the file-system. Samsung, among others, have been interested in potentially using Tux3 as an embedded Linux file-system. In fact, he said Samsung may be more interested in using Tux3 than their F2FS Flash-Friendly File-System project and he has been communicating with Samsung’s F2FS developers.

• Developers Keep Striving To Build The Linux Kernel With LLVM Clang

  With another Linux Foundation Summit means another time to hear an update about LLVMLinux, the Linux Foundation backed project to build the mainline Linux kernel with LLVM’s Clang C/C++ compiler in place of GCC.

Collaboration Summit

• Linux Kernel Panel: What’s what with Linux today

  The panel opened with Corbet pointing out that today “Almost all the people who work on the kernel are paid to do it. Only 10 percent to 20 percent are volunteers. What do your companies expect to get from your kernel work?”

• Why Does Linux Collaboration Work?

  At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit on March 26, a panel of leading Linux kernel developers discussed the current state of Linux development and collaboration.

• How Samsung is Bringing Open Source Culture Inside the Firewall

  Software companies have long realized the economic and strategic value of using and contributing code to external open source projects. But they’re much slower to understand and apply the same open source methods of collaboration to their own projects internally, said Phil Odence, vice president of business development at Black Duck Software in a Collaboration Summit presentation today.

• New Linux Foundation Members Collaborate on Connected Car Technology

• Linux Foundation Finds That Collaboration Pays Off

• Best Quotes from the Linux Kernel Developer Panel

  Linux kernel developers Greg Kroah-Hartman, Jens Axboe, Dave Chinner, Matthew Garrett, and Mel Gorman participated in a panel discussion, moderated by LWN Editor Jon Corbet, at Collaboration Summit on Wednesday. Here are some of the highlights. For the full session, view the video, below.

• Linux Storage, Filesystem, and Memory Management Summit coverage

• The Linux Foundation Presents Results of Collaborative Development Study

Graphics Stack

• NVIDIA Will Support Newly-Dropped GPUs On Linux Through 2019

• NVIDIA to Provide Support for Old Video Cards Until 2017

  NVIDIA has already made its plans clear about the legacy drivers, but now the company decided that it’s time to explain a little better what it is going to do regarding the support for old video cards in UNIX systems.

• Intel Thunderbolt Is Still A Pain For Linux Developers, Users

  While Thunderbolt was promising from a technology perspective, it hasn’t seen too much adoption outside of Apple systems and the Linux support is still plaguing developers and causing nightmares among Linux users.

Summary: The FSF gives an award for work on embracing ‘secure boot’, whereas the better option — in my own personal opinion — is to altogether boycott UEFI, for a variety of separate reasons

IT IS NOT often that I get to say this, but I disagree with the FSF’s decision to grant Matthew Garrett an award for work on UEFI. Not only has he acted as a Microsoft apologist (like Miguel de Icaza, who had also received an FSF award) but he also smeared Linux developers whom he did not agree with. Not only has he made Microsoft’s case (and Intel’s patents) stronger but he also made regulatory actions against UEFI 'secure boot' more complicated.

A world with UEFI ‘secure boot’ is a world less secure. We need to shun, boycott and altogether avoid UEFI, not find ways to embrace it. People who help popularise or lead us to acceptance of ‘secure boot’ are doing a disservice — not a service — to the principle of people controlling their own computing. That last point is what distinguishes my personal position from the FSF’s (collectively). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Matthew Garrett, GNOME Foundation’s Outreach Program for Women are Free Software Award winners

2. Matthew Garett, Outreach Program for Women awarded Free Software Awards 2014

• A discussion between database and kernel developers

• A TTM Graphics Performance Fix To Go Into Linux 3.14

  While it’s late into the Linux 3.14 kernel development cycle, a patch that was introduced in Linux 3.13 with an aim of improving open-source graphics driver performance for TTM-based drivers is now being reverted since for some situations it instead decreased the performance.

• Intel Galileo Review

  The first Arduino-certified product to come out of Intel’s embedded systems division, is the Galileo a sign of things to come or a white elephant?

• Linux Top 3: kPatch, Linux 3.14 and Ubuntu GNOME

• Linux Kernel Patching Gets Dynamic

  Red Hat is a relative late-comer to the dynamic patching party. Oracle has been in the space the longest, thanks to its 2011 acquisition of dynamic-kernel patching vendor Ksplice.

• 30 Linux Kernel Developer Work Spaces in 30 Weeks: Jes Sorensen

  He has worked on the Linux kernel and userland for more than 20 years, in areas including KVM, the kernel-based virtual machine, high speed networking, Linux/ia64, Linux/m68k, the system libraries (glibc) and high-end NUMA systems.

• Kernel prepatch 3.14-rc6

• BFS Scheduler 0.446 Supports The Linux 3.13 Kernel

  For users of the BFS scheduler patches to the kernel, they have been updated this week for the Linux 3.13 kernel.

  Con Kolivas continues maintaining his Brain Fuck Scheduler patch-set outside of the Linux kernel with no ambitions to mainline the alternative CPU scheduler. BFS 0.446 was released this week and with this release comes support for the now-stable Linux 3.13 kernel.

• DRM Kernel Log Renderer Proposed For Linux

• Samsung Laptops Will Soon See Better Linux Performance, Less Bugs

• Packaged Linux Delivers Network Functions Virtualization

  Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) are all the rage as conventional computing platforms have taken up the challenge of network routing and management (see “What’s The Difference Between SDN and NFV”). The trend is to integrate monolithic, vertically integrated hardware like gateways and routers into a single, virtualized, hardware platform.

• Students Can Help Improve LLVM & Clang, Make The Kernel Build

  On a related note, the LLVM Linux project is also seeking GSoC attention. Developers are still hard at work on making the upstream Linux kernel compatible with building under LLVM/Clang rather than just GCC. Much progress has been made in being able to build the Linux kernel with Clang but there’s still outstanding patches, etc.

Education

• Linux Foundation to Build Massive Open Online Course Program With edX, Increase Access to Linux Training for All

  The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced it is building a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) program with edX, the nonprofit online learning platform launched in 2012 by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). More than 31 universities have partnered with edX and nearly two million people have accessed its courses online since it launched just 18 months ago.

• Linux Foundation to offer Linux development on edX MOOC

• Linux Foundation and edX to Build Free MOOC for Open Source Training

• Professional online Linux classes for all – and the first one is free

Xen/ARM

• Xen enhances support for ARM

• Xen brings its virtualization goodness to more ARM chipsets

• Xen 4.4 ARMs for Virtualization, Adds SPICE

• Xen 4.4 Open Source Virtualization Targets ARM and Cloud

• Xen 4.4 Release Brings Major Features

  Xen 4.4 provides stable ARM support, improved libvirt support for libxl, a new scalable event channel interface, and many other changes. I’ve already written at length before about the big improvements to Xen 4.4 within Xen 4.4 Is On Approach With Many Features and Xen 4.4 Will Be Riding High With New Features.

• Xen hypervisor moves into ARM space

Graphics Stack

• Mesa 10.1 Released With Many Open-Source Driver Improvements

• NVIDIA Updates Legacy Driver, 304.1210 Supports New Kernels

• NVIDIA Outs New 334 Linux Driver With New Features, Fixes

  Other changes for today’s NVIDIA 334.21 Linux driver update include a NVIDIA kernel module security fix for a userspace pointer dereference, OpenGL bug-fixes, support for GPUs with VDPAU feature set E, improved application profile support, improved performance of OpenGL applications when used in conjunction with the X driver’s composition pipeline, NVIDIA Settings control panel updates, and other fixes.

• Broadcom’s New Open-Source GPU Stack Earns Praise

  Last week we talked about Broadcom finally open-sourcing their VideoCore IV 3D Graphics Stack and it is indeed the real McCoy, but the $10,000 Quake III bounty has yet to be claimed for getting it to work on the Raspberry Pi.

• Red Hat Makes A Suid Root Wrapper For Xorg

• VDPAU For NVIDIA’s Maxwell GPU On Linux

  VDPAU Feature Set E is the latest revision of NVIDIA’s PureVideo hardware that’s found in the brand new Maxwell graphics processors. With the GeForce GTX 750 series support for VDPAU Feature Set E, there is support for H.264 decoding up to 4096 x 4096 and MPEG-1/MPEG-2 streams up to 4080 x 4080. These new GPUs also support enhanced error concealment when dealing with the decoding of corrupted video streams.

Benchmarks

• My New Linux Ultrabook: The ASUS Zenbook UX301LA-DH71T

  The ASUS Zenbook UX301LA-DH71T is a Haswell-based Intel ultrabook that I have found to be quite interesting and will be carrying out a large number of Linux tests (and Windows 8.1 vs. Linux benchmarks) from this laptop that sports Intel Iris Graphics 5100, dual SSDs, and other impressive features.

• The Performance Impact Of Linux Disk Encryption On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

  For any Linux laptop users or those concerned about their data’s safety on production systems, I highly recommend utilizing disk encryption for safeguarding the data. However, what’s the performance impact like these days? In this article with the current development snapshot of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a modern Intel ultrabook we’re looking at the impact (including CPU utilization) of using an eCryptfs-based home directory encryption and LUKS-based full-disk encryption on Ubuntu Linux.

• Linux Benchmarks Of Intel’s Quark X1000 On The Galileo Board

  For those curious about the performance of Intel’s “Quark” x86 SoC for very low-power applications, including wearable devices, here’s some benchmarks of Debian on their Galileo development board.

• 30-Way Graphics Card Comparison On Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS

  …in this article we are benchmarking the AMD Catalyst and NVIDIA binary drivers on Ubuntu Linux.

• AMD Releases Beta OpenCL 1.2 Driver For Developers, Announces HSA Runtime For Linux

• Radeon Open-Source Performance Over Three Years, Compared To Legacy Catalyst

  For this article we benchmarked Ubuntu 14.04 in its current development state and compared it to the Ubuntu releases going back three years to Ubuntu 11.10.

THERE was recently a lot of coverage about jobs in Free/Open Source software (FOSS) and days or weeks later the Linux Foundation weighed in with its press release [1] about a study it had funded to frame this as a “Linux” boom. The Linux Foundation is run and managed by branding experts like Zemlin (they don't always do branding right) and marketing people, so this should not be shocking. The only problem is, they rewrite history to make it look as though only Linux counts (the big lie which gives the Linux Foundation power at the expense of camps like GNU/FSF). I am not an opponent of the Linux Foundation; I am a big fan of Linux, but I also care about accuracy and truth in reporting — something which the marketing community is unable, by definition, to care about.

Looking at the sort of headlines generated by the Linux Foundation’s latest marketing drive (e.g. 2-8]), it’s all about “Linux” but not about the rest of the stack (FOSS). The Linux Foundation is not the only entity which does this by the way. But what they call “Linux skills” often means command-line skills and basically familiarity with GNU utilities, not Linux (the kernel does not have many utilities of interest). Some tools, like OpenSSH, are from BSD. If we mislead the public by collectively referring to all those small programs as “Linux”, then we not only do a disservice to other projects but we also reinforce the philosophy of Linux, which does not stress or insist so much on freedom.

To give example of better actions from the Linux Foundation (as of late), it shared a story about a Pennsylvania high school adopting GNU/Linux and it generated some good headlines [9]. Its marketing staff issued a somewhat provocative, stereotypes-reinforcing (connoting Linux with scarce social/love life) Valentine’s post [10], not to mention today’s Facebook promotion [11] (people have openly complained about the Linux Foundation’s support for surveillance like Facebook for years). On the other hand, the Linux Foundation sets up new conferences that are named only after the kernel [12] (even when the conferences cover things beyond it [13]), which is another matter worth mentioning.

Ultimately, it would be fair to stress, not only the Linux Foundation calls/labels “Linux” a much broader system, exploiting a common misunderstanding/misconception. The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) too is doing that [14]. It often teaches GNU, but students are led to believe that it’s all “Linux”. We can do better than that. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. 2014 Linux Jobs Report: Demand for Linux Expertise Drives Hiring Priorities

2. Hiring managers desperately hunt for Linux talent: Report

   With hiring managers beefing up their plans to bring aboard talent with Linux skills over the next six months, a bright future awaits those professionals who know Linux.

   Tech recruitment firm Dice and The Linux Foundation have released the 2014 edition of the Linux Jobs Report. The two found that the growing demand for Linux talent is “driving salaries for Linux above industry norms.”

3. gNewSense Reviewed, Thanking Packagers, and Linux Jobs

4. Linux skills helping professional move forward – 2014 Linux Jobs Report

5. Keep Learning Linux—It’s The Future

6. Linux professionals are in high demand in technology job market

   Today in Open Source: Download the free 2014 Linux Jobs Report.

7. Demand for Linux Professionals is Growing

8. Demand for Linux skills rises

9. Pennsylvania high school adopts Linux, rolls out laptops to students

   Penn Manor High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania will embrace the open source Linux platform, installing it on more than 1,700 laptops. Every student at Penn Manor HS received an Acer TravelMate laptop powered by the Ubuntu 13.10 OS – and the student body was encouraged to explore the OS and push its limits.

10. What Does Your Linux Candy Heart Say?

    How does the penguin community celebrate February 14 every year? Is it with a box of chocolates? Maybe if it’s sitting next to our keyboards alongside multiple coffee mugs. What about little Necco Sweethearts? Those “luv you” messages seem a little too general to fully express the amorous thoughts of those with Linux already seeded deep in their hearts.

11. Leaked: Linux’s Look Back Facebook Video

    After trying to conceal its Facebook posts from the world for nearly a decade, Linux’s Look Back Facebook video leaked today.

12. Linux Foundation Announces Schedule for Annual Collaboration Summit

13. Dive into the world of Linux and free software at SCALE 12x this weekend in Los Angeles

14. Linux certifications closer to Kosovo

    The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world’s premier Linux certification organisation, announced that Master Affiliate for the Western Balkans Region LPI-Greece recently appointed CACTTUS as LPI Sub-Affiliate for Kosovo, a company which has a strong experience in the market of Kosovo in technology and trainings.

Core

• Patching a running kernel: legal issues unknown

  Following the news that SUSE engineers are working on a kernel module called kGraft that can patch a running kernel, iTWire contacted the company to find out if Oracle’s ownership of Ksplice – a mechanism for doing the same job – would pose any legal issues.

  Ksplice was developed by Ksplice Inc under an open source licence until July 2011 when it was bought by Oracle and taken proprietary.

• Another Init System: Sinit – The Suckless Init System

  While in-fighting continues within the Debian camp over what should be the default init system in Debian, a developer has shown off his own tiny “sinit” init system project.

  The “Suckless Init System” is a real init system and is derived from M. Farkas-Dyck’s Strake init code. This “suckless” init system is designed to be a simple system and was made to scratch the itch of a developer wanting to remove BusyBox from his toy Linux distribution, Morpheus.

Linux Foundation

• Linux Foundation Branches Out: 10 Efforts Beyond Linux

  By definition, the Linux Foundation has Linux as its core mission, helping to bring the community of Linux developers and vendors together and fostering the right environment for collaboration. When the Linux Foundation started—it was created in 2007 as a result of the merger between the Free Standards Group (FSG) and Open Source Development Labs (OSDL)—Linux was the only thing that the group did. But in 2014, that’s no longer the case.

Releases

• Linux 3.14-rc2

  With the rest being filesystems (vfs, nfs, ocfs, btrfs and some kernfs fixes), some mm noise, and tooling (perf). Shortlog appended, which doesn’t always happen for rc2.

• Linux Kernel 3.13.2 Is Now Available for Download

  Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced a few minutes ago, February 6, that the second maintenance release of the stable Linux kernel 3.13 is now available for download.

Hardware

• Intel Atom Bay Trail NUC Kit On Linux

  With the early Atom “Bay Trail” hardware being disastrous for Linux, when Intel recently announced their Bay Trail based NUC Kit we were anxious and decided to give this unit a go. The Intel NUC Kit DN2820FYK packs an Intel Celeron N2820 Bay Trail CPU and motherboard supporting up to 8GB of DDR3L system memory and 2.5-inch HDD/SSD in a 116 x 112 x 51 mm form-factor. In this article is a rundown of the Phoronix experience so far for this Atom NUC Kit and how well it’s running with Ubuntu Linux.

SDN

• Will open source SDNs provide relief?

  The needs of enterprises and service providers diverge when it comes to software-defined networking. Enterprises are the ones looking for capital and operational cost relief, while service providers require new service velocity, panelists at the inaugural OpenDaylight Summit said this week.

• The Relevance of OpenDaylight’s Hydrogen Release

• OpenDaylight: Open-source SDN is growing fast

Graphics

• Mesa “Flatland” GLSL IR Proposal

  A new GLSL intermediate representation (IR) approach has been proposed for Mesa in replacing its existing tree-based representation for shaders.

• NVIDIA 334.16 Beta Supports 64-bit EGL / OpenGL ES

  NVIDIA announced their first public Linux graphics driver beta in the 334.xx series today and with it comes a splendid number of changes.

• Nvidia Patch Release for Tegra K1 Offers Hope to Open Source Developers

• AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta Arrives with a Bang and with Linux Kernel 3.13 Support

  AMD has released the new AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta Linux video driver for the Linux platforms, featuring quite a few changes and support for a couple of new chipsets.

Linux 3.14

• An Overview Of The Linux 3.14 Kernel Features

  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.

• Linux 3.14 To Make AMD R600/700 OpenGL GS Possible

  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.

• Linux Top 3: Linux 3.14 is Not a Piece of Pi

  “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.”

• Kernel prepatch 3.14-rc1

• Download Linux Kernel 3.14 Release Candidate 1

  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.

• Linux 3.14-rc1 announced; Torvalds says codename has nothing to do with ‘Pi

• Btrfs Gets Big Changes, Features In Linux 3.14 Kernel

  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.

• Linux 3.14 Supports MIPS’ Latest CPU Core

  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

• Intel Haswell Memory Scaling With Ubuntu 14.04 + Linux 3.13

  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.

• Linux Kernel 3.13 Gets Its First Update

  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

• Clang’s Competition For GCC On Intel Haswell

  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.

• LLVM Still Working On Linux Kernel Support

  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.

• [LLVMdev] LLVM/Clang on Sparc644

  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.

• Clang Is Now Self-Hosting On Linux/FreeBSD SPARC64

Graphics Stack

• Gallium3D’s Freedreno Driver Gets A New Compiler

  Rob Clark has landed a new shader compiler into his Freedreno Gallium3D open-source graphics driver for Qualcomm’s Adreno A3xx hardware.

• NVIDIA pledges more support for Linux open source ‘Nouveau’ driver

• AMD Open-Sources VCE Video Encode Engine Code

  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.

• freedreno/a3xx/compiler: new compiler

  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.

• AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta For Linux

  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.

• AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta Available Now. Now, Chewie, NOW!

Benchmarks

• Manjaro vs. Ubuntu vs. Fedora vs. OpenSUSE Benchmarks

  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.

• Intel Linux 3.3 To Linux 3.13 Kernel Benchmarks

  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.

• Who writes Linux? Corporations, more than ever

• Tux3 Still Has Some Bugs Before Being Mainlined

  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.

• Linus Torvalds and other developers are leaving Bitcoins on the table

  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 Ƀ (worth about $2,650 at today’s Bitcoin exchange rate of $793.20). However, only 1.956 Ƀ has been received by 67 users, meaning 1.384 Ƀ, a little under $1,100 or about 40% of the value of all tips, has gone unclaimed.

Summary: Cult of Personalities takes over the news again — news which, if anything, proves Stallman’s points to be valid

EARLIER this week Nvidia made an important announcement [1] that was picked up by the press [2-8]. Nvidia shows some signs of changing, conceding its purely proprietary culture. Finally there is a response with actions, not just words. Interestingly enough, a little message from Torvalds in Google+ almost generated more headlines than the original news [9-11] (a lot of the aforementioned links overemphasise Torvalds), especially because he previously gave Nvidia the finger (as in, “up your rectum”). Imagine what the reaction would be if Stallman had done that. When Torvalds does provocative stuff in order to attract attention then it’s portrayed as “cool” or “funny”, whereas the father of GNU gets smacked down if he even dares to try. The person who all along preached in favour of source code freedom is Stallman, not Torvalds, who had also created Linux as a proprietary kernel at first (so basically the same as Nvidia). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. [RFC 00/16] drm/nouveau: initial support for GK20A (Tegra K1)

2. drm/nouveau: initial support for GK20A (Tegra K1) Directly Rendered From Nvidia

3. Nvidia gets even more open saucy

   This Tegra K1 Nouveau support is still proof-of-concept but it is a sign that Nvidia is getting more open saucy having committed to better open source graphics support in September.

4. Nvidia deepens Linux Nouveau support for upcoming Tegra chips

5. Nvidia Seeks Glasnost With Linux, Contributes Open Source Code

6. Nvidia slips love letter to open source driver devs

7. Nvidia startles Linux world with driver contribution

8. NVIDIA offers initial open source support for K1 graphics

   Chip maker NVIDIA has a long history of making sure there are Linux drivers for its graphics cards. But they’re usually closed-source drivers which means they’re not easy for OS developers and open source enthusiasts to work with. Linux founder Linus Torvalds was not amused by this approach.

9. Torvalds gives Nvidia software thumbs up, not middle finger

   “This time I’m raising a thumb for Nvidia. Good times,”Torvalds said Sunday night on Google+, a strong contrast to a June 2012 speech in which Torvalds instead offered Nvidia a middle finger for its non-cooperation. Nvidia has preferred to offer proprietary binary drivers to let operating systems use its graphics chips, not open-source software that others can adapt, modify, and debug.

10. Linus Torvalds Applauds NVIDIA For Posting Early Tegra K1 Open Source Drivers To The Nouveau Project

11. Nvidia opens Tegra K1 driver, wins Torvalds thumbs-up

Summary: Microsoft’s partner Tuxera is claimed to be violating the GPL, adding insult to injury (helping Microsoft make money from Linux shakedowns, using code that was illegally copied)

LAST year we campaigned with great success for Samsung to obey (i.e. comply with) the GPL after it had gotten caught violating it [1, 2. 3], specifically when it served Microsoft with patent traps (exFAT). Samsung’s GPL violations go years back and they show that this company, which has just liaised with Google on patents (Google too is becoming patents-greedy), is no friend of FOSS. Samsung also commits crimes, but that’s beyond the scope of our coverage.

Another company which can easily be confused or mishandled as a FOSS company because it uses Linux (but mostly provides proprietary software with Microsoft patents) is Tuxera. Like Xamarin, all it really does is promote Linux dependence on Microsoft patent traps (the ones that allegedly have Samsung paying Microsoft for Linux). exFAT (promoted by Samsung and Tuxera) as well other forms/variants of FAT are not really needed, we need to abolish them.

The woman who told us about Samsung’s GPL violations contacted us earlier today to say that based on this file (forked to https://github.com/rxrz/asuswrt-merlin just in case), Tuxera is violating the GPL.

As the reporter of this violation put it, “download the blob, run `modinfo` on it:

filename:       thfsplus.ko
license:        GPL
description:    Extended Macintosh Filesystem
author:         Brad Boyer
depends:       
vermagic:       2.6.22.19 mod_unload MIPS32_R2 32BIT

“it’s MIPS32, so `strings` won’t give the function names, rather something like this:

`strings /tmp/thfsplus.ko | grep -i tux`:
<6>Tuxera HFS+ driver 3013.11.18
/opt/tuxera/rakesh/tuxera_delivery/output/asus-router/tuxera-file-systems-3013.11.15.1-bcm4706.build/hfsplus-kmod/fs/hfsplus/extents.c
/opt/tuxera/rakesh/tuxera_delivery/output/asus-router/tuxera-file-systems-3013.11.15.1-bcm4706.build/hfsplus-kmod/fs/hfsplus/bnode.c

“Seems like a GPL violation to me,” she concluded. “I’d like to have that source code now, since it’s been based on native code from Linux.” █

Summary: Why the hype about “accelerated” cryptology (like polygons rendering, but for cryptographic purposes) is a dangerous trap that should be shunned and perpetually avoided

THE QUICKEST and most convenient way to undermine all encryption is to weaken random number generation, e.g. lower the entropy, making keys more predictable and thus easily crackable by supercomputers (or even standard computers). This is effective against everything, including online financial transactions, simply because it cracks the very core components of today’s security: SSL, PGP, etc. My doctoral degree involved a great deal of work with entropy and my daytime job too sometimes involves it, so the subject is not foreign to me. I have been watching the NSA closely for a number of years, and always with great concern and suspicion. Now we know that the NSA compels (and even bribes) US companies to help undermine privacy, if not by direct handover of data (PRISM) then by making encryption too poor, setting up back doors, forcing companies to obey NSL/subpoenas, network wiretapping/DPI, or even a combination of all those things. No need for hypotheses anymore; there’s plenty of hard proof now.

Intel, a cleverly-named criminal company (serving the intelligence community), whose hardware-level random number generator (hidden in silicon) FreeBSD refuses to trust (OpenBSD too is historically very critical of Intel) is no longer the only x86 player seeking to manufacture consent (blind trust) for encryption with no source code, just minuscule circuits of semiconductors. AMD, another US company, is now following suit with ardware-level cryptology (i.e. cryptic algorithms for cryptology, which is a non-starter). This is bad just because AMD is a US company (FreeBSD did not single out the US); any company from any country should not be trusted with this type of task. It’s no better — and it is probably much worse — than proprietary software for one’s security. To quote Michael Larabel’s article about it: “Back in November was when patches first emerged for an AMD Cryptographic Coprocessor on Linux. This co-processor provides hardware encryption and other hashing functionality for the AES crypto API, AES CMAC, XTS-AES, and SHA cryptographic interfaces within the Linux kernel.

“Not much information is publicly known on this AMD Cryptographic Coprocessor but it’s believed to be part of AMD’s embedded ARM Cortex-A5 processor on upcoming server-class Opterons with TrustZone technology.”

“Have we learned nothing at all from Snowden’s explosive leaks?”So, Linux 3.14 will try to offload something so sensitive to proprietary code concealed in silicon. Bad idea. Very bad idea. Sure, it’s Linux, but it does open itself to some blobs (e.g. Microsoft’s hypervisor and more famously drivers for peripheral cards that handle graphics), firmware, and now peripheral, embedded-in-hardware proprietary algorithms. Have we learned nothing at all from Snowden’s explosive leaks? Just look what Microsoft has done (total complicity with the NSA). A new poll at FOSS Force asks: “Do you think Red Hat is cooperating with the NSA by building back doors into RHEL?”

The responses may surprise you. Only 42% say “No”. 28% say “I don’t know” and 30% say “Yes”. This relates to an article that alludes to Techrights. It was read by thousands and has been linked to by numerous news sites. I rarely ever comment in sites where identity cannot be verified (because of fakers), but this one challenged my claims and I had to respond. Here are my three replies:

It is not purely speculative. If you think that it is, then you must not have paid close enough attention.

I have been spending at least 2 hours per day since 2012 reading about the NSA. I knew what Snowden showed even before it was publicly known and I spoke about it with RMS on numerous occasions (he came to the UK to meet Assange and then myself, focusing on mass surveillance).

The truth of the matter just needs a little digging because the corporate press is not helping the general public find it out, just like it knowingly ‘buried’ a captured agent in Iran for several years (this leaked out in November).

Similarly, GNU/Linux sites did a very poor job covering (if at all) what happened in recent months regarding Linux. Let me summarise some facts (without links, as I don’t want to be put in the moderation queue again):

- Torvalds’ father said that the NSA had approached his son regarding back doors.

- Linux had a back door added to it about a decade ago. It got removed quickly afterwards and it wasn’t known who had added it. There was press coverage about it, but it was scarce.

- RSA received a bribe from the NSA to promote security standards with back doors.

- NIST and others had NSA moles and bogus (corrupt) peer review process to help usher in security standards with back doors.

- NSA is a large Red Hat client.

- The NSA sends patches to Red Hat, which in turn sends those for Linus Torvalds to put in Linux.

(the above two are now confirmed to me by Red Hat staff)

- BSD does not trust hardware-level random number generators, suspecting — quite rightly given the NSA’s track record — that it has too low an entropy.

- Several top-level Linux developers found vulnerabilities in Linux random number generation. They quietly (without much press coverage anywhere) addressed the issue (raising the entropy) a few months back. Only the latest kernel release has the fixes applied AFAIK (I don’t know if Greg K-H backported any of it because coverage is too scarce). To lay out the magnitude of this issue, it compromises SSL, PGP, etc. (pretty much everything with encryption, even passwords) not just at client side (desktop, tablet, smartphone) but also the server side (i.e. the Internet). This is huge! But the media hasn’t covered it.

Suffice to say, Red Hat has not done anything to convince me I was wrong. Instead, I notice that Red Hat staff is stalking me in LinkedIn and I see my article cited in several news sites which wrote about the issue in several languages (3 articles in Google News are in Spanish).

If you found holes in the above statements or if you want links attached, please request them and I will provide citations. I wrote about everything before, even years ago (NSA involvement in SLE* and RHEL I covered around 2007 or 2008).

I am frustrated to see people turning against the messenger rather than the message. I see a lot of the same done to Sam Varghese. We are making ourselves more vulnerable by refusing to listen to what seems uncomfortable.

Another reply:

I was thinking along the same lines — that Edward Snowden’s leaks (by the way, they’re not just his anymore, as anonymous people from the NSA reportedly leak more and more documents to be published under his name for their safety) can at some stage show encryption undermined at more levels (hardware level, or even kernel level). We already know that encryption was undermined at RSA and NIST by NSA moles, using bribes too. We also know that Linux (kernel) developers recently revised random number generators, after they had found a weakness.

Several state officials (in 6 state at the very least) now work to stop the NSA locally. Some call for a ban on companies that facilitate the NSA (that would include Red Hat), under the premise that they are complicit in crime. I am not kidding, watch the news this week (I don’t want to paste links here as the last time I did so my comment took half a day to appear).

Lastly, there are numerous E-mails sent from and to Red Hat. These further validated my suspicions.

I saw a lot of personal attacks (trying to discredit me or even remove links to my analyses). I even heard the usual personal attacks against Sam Varghese (which I expected from Red Hat because he dares to do real journalism, i.e. journalism that companies don’t like).

Trusting Red Hat should be based on its record, not emotional leanings and faith.

Don’t get me wrong. I was not offended by you and you oughtn’t be offended by my response. I am used to this type of divisive treatment (people trying to ostracise me) since the days I criticised Novell — only to be proven right throughout and at the very end (Novell gave its patents to Linux foes).

I hope you will wait patiently for more information and assess the facts based on their merit. Don’t rely purely/solely on what you read in OpenSource.com (Red Hat). I saw Novell doing its self-delusional spiel (IP “peace of mind”) and fortunately, at the end, Novell did not find enough fools to sell its lies to.

I have been frank in my analysis of Red Hat (on patents, build process, etc.) and if you want links for particular bits of my claims, just ask. I have a repository of tens of thousands of links I collect while researching. Sometimes people refuse to accept even a well-sourced claim because of cognitive dissonance — something I’ve had a lot of experience with when dealing with Microsoft spinners.

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

― George Orwell

Here is my original reply, challenging the counter-arguments:

This article starts with an incorrect assertion that I accuse “Red Hat of being in cahoots with the NSA.”

No, NSA is a big client of Red Hat (this was not just revealed but also confirmed to me by Red Hat staff some days ago, by E-mail) and it was also confirmed that NSA submits patches to Linux through Red Hat (think of NIST and RSA; we don’t even have NSA E-mail address to keep track of). Back doors can also be added outside the scope of source code, during a build process. My job involves dealing with this risk. I don’t think you read an essential earlier post:

http://techrights.org/2013/11/24/tpm-back-doors-patriot-act-etc/

This, in turn, links to proof that the NSA did try to put back doors in Linux, as noted by Torvalds the father. See:

http://techrights.org/2013/11/17/nils-torvalds-on-back-doors/

http://techrights.org/2013/09/20/linux-backdoor-question/

http://techrights.org/2013/09/25/surveillance-lawlessness/

Defending Red Hat makes sense, but mischaractering my position is a little unfair. I note that trusting Red Hat is not easy and based on articles I read half a decade ago, NSA was involved in the build process of Windows, OS X, SUSE, and Red Hat (only those 4 were mentioned).

The bottom line is this. Do not have blind trust in Linux. Not even access to source code is enough because the build process needs to be carefully checked and validated; moreover, Linux is joined with some proprietary code and even hardware-level code, so trust is seriously harmed. Now that we know about Red Hat’s relationship with the NSA we should ask ourselves if the NSA is once again trying to put back doors in Linux, or worse, maybe it already did. Letting blobs enter the pipeline helps the NSA achieve (but hide) what it already said it wanted to achieve. █

Kernel Space

• Intel DisplayPort Gets High Bit Rate 2 In Linux 3.14

  An Intel DRM driver change that’s been queued up for the Linux 3.14 kernel provides High Bit Rate 2 (HBR2) support for DisplayPort 1.2 devices for Haswell and future generations of Intel hardware.

• Linux 3.14 Kernel Gets A Power Supply Notifier

• Nftables Steals the Show in Linux 3.13

  “The release got delayed by a week due to travels, but I suspect that’s just as well,” wrote Linux creator Linus Torvalds in the announcement email on Sunday evening. “We had a few fixes come in, and while it wasn’t a lot, I think we’re better off for it.” The patch from the eighth release candidate is “fairly small,” Torvalds added, including primarily some small architecture updates, drivers and networking fixes. The ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC and x86 architectures all saw some minor changes, he noted, including some that arose from a networking fix for the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) JIT.

• Linux kernel 3.13 and Radeon users rejoice

• Linux 3.13 Kernel Officially Released

• Why you will love nftables

  Linux 3.13 is out bringing among other thing the first official release of nftables. nftables is the project that aims to replace the existing {ip,ip6,arp,eb}tables framework aka iptables. nftables version in Linux 3.13 is not yet complete. Some important features are missing and will be introduced in the following Linux versions. It is already usable in most cases but a complete support (read nftables at a better level than iptables) should be available in Linux 3.15.

• Deadline scheduler merged for 3.14

• USB & Staging Driver Changes For The Linux 3.14 Kernel

  Besides the sysfs to Kernfs changes that were submitted on Monday by a Greg Kroah-Hartman pull request, also submitted were pull requests for the USB and staging areas of the kernel for the Linux 3.14 release.

• Linux 3.14: Generic CPU Boost, P-State Improvements

• Memory Protection Extensions Not Done For Linux 3.14

• Linux 3.13 Improves Networking, Memory Performance

  The first new Linux kernel of 2014 arrives with new features and performance enhancements for the open-source operating system.

• Linux Kernel Updates Add Features for Mobile, Cloud, Big Data

  Linux kernel version 3.13, the latest release of the open source operating system, is out as of Jan. 20. Alongside the usual slew of code updates that only geeks can fully appreciate, this release brings with it some key new features that could impact the future of open source platforms for e-commerce, personal computing and more.

• Linux Foundation takes one giant step forward with the AllSeen Alliance and the Internet of Things

  If you read the technology press lately, odds are you already know about the launching of the AllSeen Alliance (a Google News search I just did produced 412 results in a wide range of languages). That’s not a surprise, because this is an important and ambitious project. But there’s a story behind the story that likely won’t get the attention that it deserves, and that’s what this blog post is about. (Disclosure: the AllSeen Alliance is a Linux Collaboration Project—the 11th so far—and I assisted in its structuring and launch.)

• Broadwell Audio, Better PM For Sound In Linux 3.14

  Initial audio support for Intel’s Broadwell, the 2014 successor to Haswell. We’ve seen various Broadwell bits land in Linux 3.13 for graphics, etc, but it looks like the Linux 3.14 kernel will end up being the baseline for decent “out of the box” Broadwell support.

• Changes For The Linux 3.14 Kernel

Graphics Stack

• Wayland reaches version 1.4 RC

  The first release candidate for Wayland 1.4 is out now. Designed by Kristian Høgsberg, Wayland is a protocol for a compositor to talk to its clients as well as a C library implementation of that protocol. It is intended as a simpler replacement for X, easier to develop and maintain. GNOME and KDE are expected to be ported to it. Part of the Wayland project is also the Weston reference implementation of a Wayland compositor.

• NVIDIA Is Still Killing AMD Over Linux OpenGL Performance

  Back in November I published my review of the AMD Radeon R9 290 on Linux. This high-end AMD Radeon “Hawaii” graphics card ended up being a wreck on Linux: its performance was devastating. Radeon R9 290X owners have also reported their Linux performance with the Catalyst driver has been less than stellar. In new tests conducted last week with the latest AMD and NVIDIA binary graphics drivers, the high-end AMD GPUs still really aren’t proving much competition to NVIDIA’s Kepler graphics cards. Here’s a new 12 graphics card comparison on Ubuntu.

• Khronos Releases SPIR 1.2 For OpenCL

  The SPIR 1.2 specification announced today provides non-source encoding and binary level portability for OpenCL 1.2 programs. Besides the new specification they’re putting otu today, the Khronos Group is also publishing code to a modified Clang 3.2 compiler that can generate SPIR from OpenCL C 1.2 programs, a SPIR module written as an LLVM pass, and a header file with all enumerated values of the SPIR 1.2 specification.

Linux Kernel 3.13

• Linux Kernel 3.13 Officially Released with Support for NFC Payments

  Today, January 19, Linus Torvalds has proudly announced the immediate availability for download of the highly anticipated Linux kernel 3.13, which brings major improvements, numerous new and updated drivers, as well as a dozen of new features.

• The 3.13 kernel is out

  This release includes nftables, the successor of iptables, a revamp of the block layer designed for high-performance SSDs, a power capping framework to cap power consumption in Intel RAPL devices, improved squashfs performance, AMD Radeon power management enabled by default and automatic Radeon GPU switching, improved NUMA performance, improved performance with hugepage workloads, TCP Fast Open enabled by default, support for NFC payments, support for the High-availability Seamless Redundancy protocol, new drivers and many other small improvements.

Linux Kernel 3.14

• SCHED_DEADLINE To Be Added To Linux 3.14 Kernel

  The first 3.14 pull request worth pointing out on Phoronix are the scheduler changes sent in by Ingo Molnar. The most notable change with this pull is the initial implementation of SCHED_DEADLINE. SCHED_DEADLINE is a new CPU scheduler for the Linux kernel that’s been in development for several years and has undergone numerous revisions. SCHED_DEADLINE implements the Earliest Deadline First (EDF) scheduling algorithm.

• Intel Merrifield MID Support Landing In Linux 3.14

  The Intel MID (Mobile Internet Device) platform updates for the Linux 3.14 kernel include supporting Merrifield and Clovertrail platforms. Clovertrail has been around for a while but Merrifield is Intel’s new smart-phone architecture focused on Android. Merrifield has a 22nm Atom SoC and it’s expected to start appearing this quarter.

• Linux 3.14 Officializes Broadwell, Deprecates Legacy UMS

  Daniel Vetter of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center blogged on Wednesday about the major changes queued up for the Linux 3.14 kernel as it concerns their DRM kernel graphics driver. The main changes for Intel DRM in Linux 3.14 include runtime D3 support, wwatermark computation / frame-buffer compression fixes, a rewrite of the low-level backlight code, work on full PPGTT support, Bay Trail Atom improvements, and a kernel option to disable legacy fbdev support.

Old Linux Kernels

• Linux Kernel 3.12.8 Is Now Available for Download

  Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced a few hours ago, January 15, that the eight maintenance release of the stable Linux kernel 3.12 is now available for download.

More Kernel

• Kdbus Details

• Intel vs. AMD Performance-Per-Watt On Ubuntu 14.04 Linux

  To complement the many Intel vs. AMD CPU/APU Linux benchmarks published earlier this week as part of our AMD A10-7850K “Kaveri” APU coverage, here’s some results mostly examining the performance-per-Watt and overall system power consumption of the many different Intel and AMD processors running Ubuntu Linux.

• Linux Kernel’s Sysfs Logic Turns Into “Kernfs” For 3.14

  Kernfs is the sysfs logic that in turn can be taken advantage of by other subsystems in need of a virtual file-system with handling for device connect/disconnect, dynamic creation, and other attributes.

Graphics Stack

• Wayland and Weston 1.3.93 (1.4 RC)

  We’re getting close to the 1.4.0 release date – well, actually that was supposed to be Jan 16, but we ended up slipping a week to get a more solid first beta (1.3.92) out. We tagged that Jan 10 and here’s 1.3.93, aka second beta or release candidate:

• Linux Graphics News

  2013 has been a dramatic and controversial year for graphics in Linux, yet actual changes to the overall graphics stack have so far been more incremental than revolutionary. But with us closing in on several Linux distributions’ Long-Term Support releases this is to be expected, as stability weighs stronger than novelty among consumers of these products. This next summer may be a safer window for distros to undertake major transitions; we should expect to see major graphics system transitions in desktop distros at that point. The landing of XWayland support in the X server can be seen as an early indicator of a Wayland desktop future, since it’s a crucial prerequisite.

Intel

• New Intel Broadwell Backends Land In Mesa

  Some open-source Intel Linux developers have been busy this weekend to ensure the Broadwell open-source driver enablement work will be ready for when the hardware ships in a few months time so it won’t be like the poor open-source Kaveri driver.

• Intel Graphics Driver Installer 1.0.3 For Ubuntu/Fedora

AMD

• The Linux 3.13 Kernel Is A Must-Have For AMD RadeonSI Users

  The Linux 3.13 kernel that will be released in the very near future is very worth the upgrade if you are a RadeonSI user — in particular, the Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs and newer on the Gallium3D Linux graphics driver — but other open-source graphics driver users as well may also see nice improvements in the new kernel release. Here’s some benchmarks showing off the gains found with the Linux 3.13 kernel for Radeon HD and R9 graphics cards.

• AMD A10-7850K Radeon R7 Graphics Comparison

  The latest benchmarks of the AMD A10-7850K APU to share on Phoronix and to complement yesterday’s Windows vs. Linux OpenGL comparison are benchmarks of the APU’s Radeon R7 Graphics compared to numerous AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards.

• RadeonSI GLAMOR 2D Performance vs. Catalyst

  While the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver continues making much headway as the modern open-source AMD Gallium3D Linux graphics driver along with the GLAMOR library it depends upon for 2D acceleration, the 2D performance of the Linux desktop is still quite poor compared to the proprietary Catalyst driver.