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Links 16/7/2017: Mesa 17.1.5, FreeBSD 11.1 RC3





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • How I put Linux in the enterprise
    I used to work in higher ed. In the late 1990s, we moved to a new student records system. We created an "add-on" web registration system, so students could register on-line—still a new idea in 1998. But when we finally went live, the load crushed the web servers. No one could register. We tried to fix it, but nothing worked.


  • Desktop





  • Kernel Space



    • Linux 4.12.2
      I'm announcing the release of the 4.12.2 kernel.

      All users of the 4.12 kernel series must upgrade.

      The updated 4.12.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.12.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st...


    • Linux 4.11.11
    • Linux 4.9.38
    • Linux 4.4.77
    • Linux 3.18.61


    • UBIFS Gets Statx Support, Better Encryption In Linux 4.13
      The Linux 4.13 kernel changes for the UBIFS file-system have been submitted.

      UBIFS, as a reminder, is the Unsorted Block Image File-System deigned for flash memory devices off the UBI layer. UBIFS in Linux 4.10 gained file-encryption support making use of the fscrypt functionality used as well by F2FS and EXT4. With Linux 4.13, there are UBIFS related encryption updates and fixes.


    • Linux 4.13 Thermal Management Sees Some Improvements For CPU_Cooling
      The thermal management updates have landed in the Linux 4.13 code-base.


    • Linux 4.13-rc1 Kernel Released


    • Merge window over - Linux 4.13-rc1 out
      Ok, normally I do this on Sunday afternoon, but occasionally it happens a day early like now to avoid people timing me.

      In fact, I was planning on doing it yesterday evening this time around because I was so annoyed with lots of late pull requests on Friday (and some today), but ended up going to dinner and not getting everything done, so it's only one day early. Next time...


    • The New Changes & Features Of The Linux 4.13 Kernel
      With Linux 4.13-rc1 having been released, here's my original look at the new features coming for the Linux 4.13 kernel and the other changes merged over the past two weeks of this new cycle.



    • Please pull NFS client changes for Linux 4.13


    • Graphics Stack



      • Mesa 17.1.5 Brings More Fixes To Open-Source GPU Driver Users
        Andres Gomez of Igalia has announced Mesa 17.1.5 as the newest point release to the current Mesa 3D stable series.

        Mesa 17.1.5 fixes a potential crash in core Mesa, has Vulkan / SPIR-V fixes, the usual notable fixes in the Intel i965 and RadeonSI drivers, and some smaller fixes to Etnaviv, OpenSWR, SVGA, and other parts of this massive user-space 3D graphics stack.


      • [Mesa-announce] [ANNOUNCE] mesa 17.1.5
        In Mesa Core we include a fix to prevent a potential crash.


      • Mesa 17.1.5 Linux Graphics Stack Released, Improves AMD Radeon & Intel Drivers
        After teasing us a couple of days ago with the upcoming availability of the fifth maintenance update to the Mesa 17.1 3D Graphics Stack for GNU/Linux distributions, Mesa developer Andres Gomez is now announcing the final release of Mesa 17.1.5.

        Mesa 17.1.5 comes only two weeks after the Mesa 17.1.4 update that probably many of you are using right now on your Linux distros, and it's here to add an extra layer of improvements for those using AMD Radeon or Intel graphics cards. First off, Mesa 17.1.5 fixes a potential crash in Mesa Core, adds better support for the GLSL and SPIR-V compilers, and solves a linking problem with standalone Android builds.


      • Vulkan 1.0.54 Lands In Mesa For Intel ANV, Some RADV Extensions
        It's fabulous to see how promptly the Mesa Vulkan drivers are receiving support for new extensions.

        Vulkan 1.0.54 was released on Thursday. This updated promoted the external memory and semaphores extensions from experimental to stable. They also added new extensions for 16-bit storage, dedicated allocation, storage buffer storage class, variable pointers, new memory requirements query, and external fences for external memory.


      • Difficulties and Success Stories
        This hints to a fundamental issue with our approach of using the Present extension in Xwayland. The extension was written with hardware in mind. It assumes a flip happens directly on a screen. There is no intermediate link like a Wayland compositor and if a flip has happened the old buffer is not on the screen anymore. Why do we still try to leverage the Present extension support in Xwayland then? There are two important features of a Wayland compositor we want to have with Xwayland: A tear-free experience for the user and the ability to output a buffer rendered by a direct rendering client on a hardware plane without any copies in between. Every frame is perfect should also remain valid when using some legacy application and that we want no unnecessary copies is simply a question of performance improvements. This is especially important for many of the more demanding games out there, which won’t be Wayland native in the short term and some of them maybe never. Both features need the the full Present extension support in the Xwayland DDX. Without it a direct rendering application would still use the Present extension but only with its fallback code path of copying the Pixmap’s content. And for a tear-free experience we would at least need to sync these copies to the frame events sent by the Wayland compositor or better directly allow multiple buffers, otherwise we would limit our frame rate. In both cases this means again to increase the Present extension support.


      • It Looks Like Intel Could Begin Pushing Graphics Tech More Seriously
        It's been a while now since last seeing some major graphics advancements on Intel CPUs. With Skylake/Kabylake we are on "Gen 9" graphics, Kabylake-Refresh / Coffeelake is still Gen9 graphics, Broadwell was on Gen8, Haswell on Gen7.5, and IvyBridge on Gen 7. But with upcoming launches past Kabylake-Refresh/Coffeelake, it looks like we'll be stamping out Gen 10, Gen 11, and Gen 12.


      • Codeplay Release “clspv”, an OpenCL Tool for Vulkan Enabled Devices
        In collaboration with Google, Codeplay is proud to announce the release of a new open-source tool allowing the compilation of OpenCL C language kernels to run on the Vulkan API.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt



      • digiKam GSoC Students in Egypt


        It was nice meeting Ahmed and Shaza @ faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University in Cairo. I am proud to mentor them in Google Summer of Code.

        Ahmed is working on implementing a DLNA server in digiKam core to export photo and video hosted in physical and virtual collections. The server is ready and he working on the configuration panel UI. See more here.



      • Best be precise
        KSysGuard — the system monitor — on FreeBSD seems oddly precise.


      • Plasma Wayland and Qt 5.9 and beyond
        As you might know Qt 5.8 created challenging problems for our Wayland session and threw our efforts back quite a bit. In this post I want to discuss the actual problems it created, how we are addressing them and looking into the future.


      • The Regressed State Of KDE Plasma On Wayland, But Things Should Get Better
        KWin maintainer Martin Gräßlin has written a blog post explaining the issues they've run into with KDE Plasma on Wayland and how changes to Qt have set them back months in their Wayland session support.


      • Akademy Schedule
        The workshops and lightning talks and BoFs are being planned, too. I’m glad Anu Mittal has mentioned her QML + JS workshop, it’s a great topic for getting started with application development. QML is something I’ve never gotten in to, but should, so I’ve penciled this workshop into my schedule as well.


      • [Krita] GSoC’17-Week #4


      • KF5 Applications Porting


        Next week, KDE developers will release the beta of KDE Applications 17.08. This release will again have more applications and nearly all games ported to Qt5/KF5. While Qt4 is already no longer supported for over a year, KDE has decided to support Qt4/kdelibs4-based applications a bit longer.

        The 17.08 release, however, will be the last to include Qt4/kdelibs4-based applications. This means, 17.12 will only include applications that are based on Qt5/KF5. See this mailing list discussion.


      • Kdenlive 17.04.3 released
        In comparison to previous versions this was the least exciting development cycle, in terms of new features, since all focus has been on the code refactoring which will bring more stability and new features. Don’t miss the next Café to keep track on the progress and share your thoughts if you like.






  • Distributions



    • Reviews



      • Solus 2017.04.18.0 review - Second time lucky?
        Solus 2017 looks like a nice distro, with some obvious visual caveats and tiny functional quirks. It's reasonable enough than I'm determined to test it on non-UEFI hardware, where I'll hopefully have more luck. But on a UEFI platform, it seems hopeless. I don't know there should be a problem when so many other distros do just fine without any issues. Solus seems to be a special snowflake, and it does not cooperate well with a modern and complex system.

        All in all, I cannot recommend the distro, because the outcome may still be harmful. If a distro cannot install properly, the results can be unpredictable. My testing shows some very favorable things, and Budgie looks quite all right now, but as a package, Solus just doesn't handle UEFI well. I'll report back after a third, and hopefully lucky test, but you are warned to carefully proceed until the hardware side has been polished. Double sigh. Maybe another another time.


      • A Short Review of Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Cinnamon LTS




    • New Releases



      • Introducing Endless OS 3.2
        This major release brings some exciting changes with a refreshed desktop, great visual improvements, and more offline apps for our users in Southeast Asia to enjoy. Since this is a major release, make sure to update your OS (Settings > Details > Check for updates now), before you update your apps from the App Center!




    • Red Hat Family



    • Debian Family





  • Devices/Embedded





Free Software/Open Source



  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Pale Moon browser new release, better media support


        I have updated my palemoon.SlackBuild and have uploaded fresh Slackware packages for this new Pale Moon 27.4.0. As previously shared with you, I diverge from the official developers’ recommendations about how to compile this browser on Linux. For instance the gcc compiler I used on Slackware 14.2 is gcc-5.3.0 (which is part of this distro release). On -current I failed compiling with the gcc-7.1.0 compiler which is the default there and I had to create a “gcc5” package for gcc-5.4.0 (which was an earlier gcc version in slackware-current). I wrote an article on this very blog about that gcc5 package if you are interested, it can be installed in parallel with Slackware’s own gcc-7. There are some other differences, mainly in the way I optimize my build.






  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • LibreOffice 5.3.4 Released and Available via PPA for Ubuntu/Linux Mint
      LibreOffice is the power-packed free, libre and open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, the word processor, Calc, the spreadsheet application, Impress, the presentation engine, Draw, our drawing and flowcharting application, Base, our database and database frontend, and Math for editing mathematics. Its clean interface and powerful tools let you unleash your creativity and grow your productivity. Support and documentation is free from our large, dedicated community of users, contributors and developers.




  • BSD



    • NAS4Free 11.1.0.4.4485 Released


    • FreeBSD 11.1-RC3 Available
      The third RC build for the FreeBSD 11.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, i386, aarch64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.


    • FreeBSD 11.1-RC3 Now Available
      The third RC build of the 11.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available. This is expected to be the final RC build of the 11.1-RELEASE cycle.


    • FreeBSD 11.1 RC3 Released As The Final Build Is Near
      FreeBSD 11.1 remains on track for releasing later this month.

      FreeBSD 11.1 RC3 is available this weekend as what should be the final release candidate for this minor update to FreeBSD 11. Changes found in FreeBSD 11.1 RC3 include adding deprecation notices to gdb/kgdb/sicontrol/wlconfig and other drivers that will be removed in FreeBSD 12.0, Capsicum support in the Bhyve virtualization code, and various other fixes and clean-ups.




  • Licensing/Legal



    • EUPL v1.2 becomes OSI approved

      "The OSI has approved EUPL v1.2. It will be added to the public list of OSI-approved licenses in due course. As with EUPL 1.1, the approval extends to all the official language versions of the license."





Leftovers



Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 04/11/2026: Slop Helps Break Laws and Scam Altman Pretends Chatbots Are Persons
Links for the day
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXVII - Tasteless, Tactless Time for "Virtue-Signalling" (When Your Actions Are Much Like the GOP's)
Violence by cops isn't a "leftist" thing
United Arab Emirates: GNU/Linux at Over 8%
According to statCounter
As XBox Goes Out of Business Helen Chiang Adds Insult to Injury
XBox sales are worst in 25 years
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXIV - Women as Hostages, Even Spouses
First he put his own spouse behind bars by accusing the spouse of what he himself seems guilty of
A Geminispace Tally
That's not the Web, it is an alternative to it
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXIII - Shooting the Messenger is a Presidential Tactic
why our ministers are looking for ways to fix the law.
 
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXVIII - Telling the Police About the Defamatory Blog Where Posts Targeted My Wife and I (From Across the Atlantic Ocean)
Two years ago we spoke to cops a lot
The Register MS is Losing Money Again, Based on The Register MS
Selling out didn't pay off for very long
There Are No "Layoffs" Anymore, Layoffs Got Rebranded
We're entering bizarre times when layoffs are said to be "down" (according to the regime that suffered a 'bloodbath' in the election) because companies quit using the term "layoffs"
Gemini Links 05/11/2026: Rivers of London, Soul Cakes, STMicroelectronics, and Slop
Links for the day
The Register MS Has Just Published Fake Article With "AI" 84 Times in the Page Because It Was Paid to Do This!
Astounding number of mentions of "AI" (84 in total)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 04, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 04, 2026
Gemini Links 04/11/2026: Abacus and Spare IT Equipment
Links for the day
Viet Nam and Thailand at High Adoption Levels of GNU/Linux, Other Nations Nearby Are No Exception
Helen Chiang and her colleagues say it's a "clown show" at Microsoft
Richard Stallman on What It's Like to be Threatened by Strangers With Software Patents
We hope that some EPO insiders will take time to listen to this talk
Stealth Layoffs at IBM (PIPs and Bailouts)
string of reports or unverified hearsay
Steven Vaughan-Nichols is Slop
Just look at this
The Register MS is "Hosting a Dinner" for Sponsors
Remember that The Register MS keeps publishing spam about "AI"
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXVI - A Potent Microsoft Threat to Administration of Justice Globally (Not Just Fair Elections)
Breaking into machines to cover up one's own crimes
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXV - When One Does Not Understand Security (Nor Ever Pursues Security)
One might therefore conclude that Garrett is a proponent of American back doors
Links 04/11/2026: "Democratic Establishment" Wins Big and "Pentagon Sued Over Hegseth’s New “Future of Warfare” Committee Led by Musk"
Links for the day
Andy's Latest Writings About Proton CEO Andy Yen, "JavaScript Required", and Slavery in Technology
Andy (of The Cyber Show) has some new material
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXII - Malfunctions Reported in Windows Voting Machines (as Usual)
"There are always problems," Ryan told us
Gemini Links 04/11/2026: GoAccess, Adopting Gopher, and Twisty Passages
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 03, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 03, 2026
"The Judge Accepted That Mrs Schestowitz Had Been the Subject of a Vicious Campaign of Online Harassment"
That's consistent with how they men treat women
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXI - Microsoft and Promoters of "Secure Boot" Are to Blame
the important thing is that the dictator and Microsoft can remotely control all computers
Links 03/11/2026: Science Around "Near-Death Experiences" and "Do Animals Grieve?"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2026: Guitar, 3D-Printable Electric Spinning Wheel, Against Haven Social, and More
Links for the day
Intel Corporation Down Over 51% in One Month, the US Bailout Didn't Work
Is the slop industry [sic] next?
Microsoft European Development Centre (EDC) Next to be Culled?
No time for that anymore
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXX - Breaking This Year’s Election Process With Bug Doors in Restricted Boot
Thankfully here in the UK we typically still vote with paper and pencil
Mass Layoffs at SUSE, Over 10% of Staff Gone
Ignore their excuses
When You're a Software Developer and They Tell You That Your Occupation is Dead or Dying in Order to Sell Dysfunctional Offerings Based on Hype (and Plagiarism)
Disbelief is a strength when companies borrow trillions of dollars to sell a dud and construct a pyramid scheme
Links 03/11/2026: Slop-Tied Debt is Becoming a Crisis (Lenders Panic), "Ukrainian Journalists Urge Global Media Not to Look Away From Russian Aggression"
Links for the day
Malaysia Seems to be Exploring Digital Independence With GNU/Linux and More
not too bad
Microsoft Windows is Crashing in Republic of South Korea
Like in Japan, they seem to be shutting the lid on decades of Microsoft-isms
Think Less, Aim for Less (When It Comes to Hardware)
An abundance of hardware being wasted on a pyramid scheme will become a cautionary tale one day
Gemini Links 03/11/2026: Stargazing, Linux-Powered Prism "Ambient Computer", and Abandoning Streaming Disservices
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Made Big Strides in Portugal This Year
Microsoft had many layoffs in Portugal in recent years
GNU/Linux in Argentina Now Measured at 8% "Market Share"
Argentina is known for exporting skilled footballers, not advanced technology, but it has a large population, which we can hope will dump Windows
Microsoft is Borrowing Loads of Money While Telling 60,000 Workers to Take the "Offer" and Leave, Microsoft Wants Bailouts From the Dictator
Vote in elections and also vote with your wallet
Microsoft and Spoilt Food
Some whistleblowers may be needed here
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXIX - Undermining US Election While Engaging in Lawfare in England (BBC) Against Publishers That Cover Anti-Election Violence
The elephant in the room is back doors in voting machines
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 02, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, November 02, 2026