Bonum Certa Men Certa

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

A Week After a Worldwide Windows Outage Microsoft is 'Bricking' Windows All On Its Own, Cannot Blame Others Anymore
A look back at a week of lousy press coverage, Microsoft deceit, and lessons to be learned
 
Links 26/07/2024: Tesco Cutbacks and Fake Patent Courts
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2024: Grimy Residue of the 'AI' Bubble and Tensions Around Alaska
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2024: More Computers and Tilde Hosting
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2024: "AI" Hype Debunked and Elon Musk's "X" Already Spreads Political Disinformation
Links for the day
"Why you boss is insatiably horny for firing you and replacing you with software."
Ask McDonalds how this "AI" nonsense with IBM worked out for them
No Olympics
We really need to focus on real news
Nobody Holds the GNOME Foundation Accountable (Not Even IRS), It's Governed by Lawyers, Not Geeks, and Headed by a Shaman Crank
GNOME is a deeply oppressive institutions that eats its own
[Meme] The 'Modern' Web and 'Linux' Foundation Reinforcing Monopolies and Cementing centralisation
They don't care about the users and issuing a few bytes with random characters costs them next to nothing. It gives them control over billions of human beings.
'Boiling the Frog' or How Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is Being Abandoned at Short Notice by Let's Encrypt
This isn't a lack of foresight but planned obsolescence
When the LLM Bubble Implodes Completely Microsoft Will be 'Finished'
Excuses like, "it's not ready yet" or "we'll fix it" won't pass muster
"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs"
The lesson of this story is, if you do evil things, bad things will come your way. So don't do evil things.
When Wikileaks Was Still Primarily a Wiki
less than 14 years ago the international media based its war journalism on what Wikileaks had published
The Free Software Foundation Speaks Out Against Microsoft
the problem is bigger than Microsoft and in the long run - seeing Microsoft's demise - we'll need to emphasise Software Freedom
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 25, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, July 25, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Links 26/07/2024: E-mail on OpenBSD and Emacs Fun
Links for the day
Links 25/07/2024: Talks of Increased Pension Age and Biden Explains Dropping Out
Links for the day
Links 25/07/2024: Paul Watson, Kernel Bug, and Taskwarrior
Links for the day
[Meme] Microsoft's "Dinobabies" Not Amused
a slur that comes from Microsoft's friends at IBM
Flashback: Microsoft Enslaves Black People (Modern Slavery) for Profit, or Even for Losses (Still Sinking in Debt Due to LLMs' Failure)
"Paid Kenyan Workers Less Than $2 Per Hour"
From Lion to Lamb: Microsoft Fell From 100% to 13% in Somalia (Lowest Since 2017)
If even one media outlet told you in 2010 that Microsoft would fall from 100% (of Web requests) to about 1 in 8 Web requests, you'd probably struggle to believe it
Microsoft Windows Became Rare in Antarctica
Antarctica's Web stats still near 0% for Windows
Links 25/07/2024: YouTube's Financial Problem (Even After Mass Layoffs), Journalists Bemoan Bogus YouTube Takedown Demands
Links for the day
Gemini Now 70 Capsules Short of 4,000 and Let's Encrypt Sinks Below 100 (Capsules) as Self-Signed Leaps to 91%
The "gopher with encryption" protocol is getting more widely used and more independent from GAFAM
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 24, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Techrights Statement on YouTube
YouTube is a dying platform
[Video] Julian Assange on the Right to Know
Publishing facts is spun as "espionage" by the US government and "treason" by the Russian government, to give two notable examples
Links 25/07/2024: Tesla's 45% Profit Drop, Humble Games Employees All Laid Off
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/07/2024: Losing Grip and collapseOS
Links for the day
LWN (Earlier This Week) is GAFAM Openwashing Amplified
Such propaganda and openwashing make one wonder...
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Blog: Microsoft Operatives Promoting Proprietary Software for Microsoft
This is corruption
Libre-SOC Insiders Explain How Libre-SOC and Funding for Libre-SOC (From NLNet) Got 'Hijacked' or Seized
One worked alongside my colleagues and I in 2011
Why We're Revealing the Ugly Story of What Happened at Libre-SOC
Aside from the fact that some details are public already
Removing the Lid Off of 'Cancel Culture' (in Tech) and Shutting It Down by Illuminating the Tactics and Key Perpetrators
Corporate militants disguised as "good manners"
FSF, Which Pioneered GNU/Linux Development, Needs 32 More New Members in 2.5 Days
To meet the goal of a roughly month-long campaign
Lupa Statistics, Based on Crawling Geminispace, Will Soon Exceed Scope of 4,000 Capsules
Capsules or unique capsules or online capsules are in the thousands and growing
Links 24/07/2024: Many New Attacks on Journalists, "Private Companies Own The Law"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/07/2024: Face à Gaïa, Emacs Timers for Weekly Event, Chromebook Survives Water Torture
Links for the day
Why Virtually All the Wikileaks Copycats, Forks, and Rivals Basically Perished
Cryptome is like the "grandpa" of them all
A Total Lack of Transparency: Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) Fails to Explain Why Over 60% of Users Are Gone (Since a Week Ago)
IRC giants have fallen
In the United Kingdom Google Search Rises to All-Time High, Microsoft Fell Nearly 1.5% Since the LLM Hype Began
Microsoft is going to need actual products or it will gradually vanish from the market
Trying to Put Out the Fire at Microsoft
Microsoft is drowning in debt while laying off loads of staff, hoping it can turn things around
GNU/Linux Growing at Vista 11's Expense
it's tempting to deduce many people who got PCs with Vista 11 preinstalled are deleting it, only to replace it with GNU/Linux
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 23, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 23, 2024