Linux (Kernel) News From the Past Week
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-07 15:34:56 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-07 15:34:56 UTC
Summary: News about Linux, accumulated and sorted over the past days for easier digestion
Linux 3.14
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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.
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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.
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"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."
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
Graphics Stack
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Rob Clark has landed a new shader compiler into his Freedreno Gallium3D open-source graphics driver for Qualcomm's Adreno A3xx hardware.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Benchmarks
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 ÃÆ (worth about $2,650 at today's Bitcoin exchange rate of $793.20). However, only 1.956 ÃÆ has been received by 67 users, meaning 1.384 ÃÆ, a little under $1,100 or about 40% of the value of all tips, has gone unclaimed.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Free Software Community/Volunteers Aren't Circus Animals of GAFAM, IBM, Canonical and So On...
- Playing with people's lives for capital gain or "entertainment" isn't acceptable
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- Running This Site Mostly a Joyful Activity
- The real problem or the thing that we need to cancel is this "Cancel Culture"
- Australia Has Finally Joined the "4% Club" (ChromeOS+GNU/Linux)
- statCounter stats
- Debian as a Hazardous Workplace Where No Accountability Exists (Nor Salaries)
- systematic exploitation of skilled developers by free 'riders' (or freeloaders) like Google, IBM, and Microsoft
- Clownflare Isn't Free and Its CEO Openly Boasted They'd Start Charging Everyone to Offset the Considerable Losses (It's a Trap, It's Just Bait)
- Clownflare has collapsed
- Apple Delivered Very Disappointing Results, Said It Would Buy Its Own Shares (Nobody Will Check This), Company's Debt Now Exceeds Its Monetary Assets
- US debt is now 99.98 trillion dollars
- FSFE Still Boasts About Working Underage People for No Pay
- without even paying them
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 04, 2024
- IRC logs for Saturday, May 04, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- The Persecution of Richard Stallman
- WebM version of a new video
- Molly de Blanc has been terminated, Magdalen Berns' knockout punch and the Wizard of Oz
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- [Meme] IBM's Idea of Sharing (to IBM)
- the so-called founder of IBM worshiped and saluted Adolf Hitler himself
- Neil McGovern & Debian: GNOME and Mollygate
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- [Meme] People Who Don't Write Code Demanding the Removal of Those Who Do
- She has blue hair and she sleeps with the Debian Project Leader
- Jaminy Prabaharan & Debian: the GSoC admin who failed GSoC
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Jonathan Carter, Matthew Miller & Debian, Fedora: Community, Cult, Fraud
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Techrights This May
- We strive to keep it lean and fast
- Links 04/05/2024: Attacks on Workers and the Press
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/05/2024: Abstractions in Development Considered Harmful
- Links for the day
- Links 04/05/2024: Tesla a "Tech-Bubble", YouTube Ads When Pausing
- Links for the day
- [Meme] The Cancer Culture
- Mission accomplished?
- Germany Transitioning to GNU/Linux
- Why aren't more German federal states following the footsteps of Schleswig-Holstein?
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 03, 2024
- IRC logs for Friday, May 03, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Alexander Wirt, Bucha executions & Debian political prisoners
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 03/05/2024: Clownflare Collapses and China Deploys Homegrown Aircraft Carrier
- Links for the day
- IBM's Decision to Acquire HashiCorp is Bad News for Red Hat
- IBM acquired functionality that it had already acquired before
- Apparently Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Again (Late Friday), Meaning Mass Layoffs Every Month This Year Including May
- not familiar with the source site though
- Gemini Links 03/05/2024: Diaspora Still Alive and Fight Against Fake News
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Reserving Scorn for Those Who Expose the Misconduct
- they like to frame truth-tellers as 'harassers'
- Why the Articles From Daniel Pocock (FSFE, Fedora, Debian Etc. Insider) Still Matter a Lot
- Revisionism will try to suggest that "it's not true" or "not true anymore" or "it's old anyway"...
- Links 03/05/2024: Canada Euthanising Its Poor and Disabled, Call for Julian Assange's Freedom
- Links for the day
- Dashamir Hoxha & Debian harassment
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Maria Glukhova, Dmitry Bogatov & Debian Russia, Google, debian-private leaks
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Who really owns Debian: Ubuntu or Google?
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Keeping Computers at the Hands of Their Owners
- There's a reason why this site's name (or introduction) does not obsess over trademarks and such
- In May 2024 (So Far) statCounter's Measure of Linux 'Market Share' is Back at 7% (ChromeOS Included)
- for several months in a row ChromeOS (that would be Chromebooks) is growing
- Links 03/05/2024: Microsoft Shutting Down Xbox 360 Store and the 360 Marketplace
- Links for the day
- Evidence: Ireland, European Parliament 2024 election interference, fake news, Wikipedia, Google, WIPO, FSFE & Debian
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Enforcing the Debian Social Contract with Uncensored.Deb.Ian.Community
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 03/05/2024: Antenna Needs Your Gemlog, a Look at Gemini Get
- Links for the day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 02, 2024
- IRC logs for Thursday, May 02, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day