http://www.phoronix.com/ GNU/Linux and Solaris news from Phoronix en-us http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2Ng http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2Ng For those of you not out celebrating the Independence Day / 4th of July in America, there is a new release candidate for the Linux 2.6.31 kernel that is now ready for testing. In this second release candidate there is a new DRM pull bringing various fixes and improvements, including Intel DisplayPort support for hardware with such new connectors. Beyond updates to the kernel side of the Linux graphics stack, Linux 2.6.31-rc2 brings performance counters to new architectures, large architecture updates for MIPS and PowerPC, a large intel-iommu merge, and various other changes. Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:07:58 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2NQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2NQ Yo Frankie, the open-source video game that was developed around the Blender modeling software, has received its first major update after reaching version 1.0 some seven months ago. New in Yo Frankie! v1.1 are three new maps (thanks to a map design competition), various game improvements, updated game logic based upon Blender 2.49, improved frame-rate performance, various clean-ups, and there is now a loading screen to appear between levels. Some of the Yo Frankie! game clean-ups include the Blender3D files, materials, textures, and unfinished game levels. This new version of Yo Frankie! is available for a free download on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms from their project web-site. Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:12:50 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2NA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2NA In their bi-weekly tradition, the developers behind Wine have pushed out a new development release for this popular and important open-source project. Wine 1.1.25 is the newest development release and it has quite a few translation updates, support for various Unicode file encodings in Notepad, improved memory management, desktop menus are now cleared up automatically, the start of a windowscodecs DLL implementation, and of course various bug fixes. Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:58:44 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2Mw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2Mw AMD's John Bridgman has shared that the open-source R600/700 3D driver for Linux is becoming usable, slowly but surely. Months after releasing documentation, a programmer's guide, and sample code, their Mesa driver is beginning to do useful things -- more so than just rendering simple triangles. The ATI R600/700 3D driver is derived from the Radeon driver rewrite and is currently living in a branch off of Mesa. Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:30:17 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2Mg http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2Mg Fluendo, the company that's largely behind G-Streamer and produces legal audio/video codecs for Linux, has now launched its own DVD player solution for Linux. Fluendo's new DVD player software is, of course, built upon the G-Streamer framework. Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:26:10 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2MQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2MQ NVIDIA's Aaron Plattner has just announced the release of the xf86-video-nv 2.1.14 driver, but does it have anything in store? Not really. The NVIDIA open-source X.Org driver update brings support for a couple of new ASICs, fixed mode-setting for some NVIDIA GPUs, and other fixes, but nothing too exciting... Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:01:56 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2MA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM2MA One of the benefits of moving the different graphics hardware drivers over to using kernel mode-setting, an in-kernel GPU memory manager (whether it be GEM or TTM), and other newer X innovations is the possibility of now running the X Server without root privileges. By doing so, this of course improves the security since this very large chunk of code is no longer running with all of these high-privileged rights. Due to now living in a KMS-enabled world, at least on the Intel and ATI side (the NVIDIA side is still slowly but surely coming via Nouveau), it's rather easy to get the X Server running without any special rights. Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:31:26 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1OQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1OQ With KDE 4.3 being scheduled for release later this month, Sebastian Kügler on the behalf of the KDE developers around the world has announced the KDE 4.3.0 release candidate. KDE 4.3 RC1 further polishes and completes the K Desktop Environment 4 with the integration of many new Linux desktop technologies, new KWin effects, improvements across the board, and many bug fixes in KDE4 packages. The KDE 4.3 RC1 announcement with the extensive change-log is available from KDE.org. Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:22:10 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1OA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1OA F Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:02:13 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1Nw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1Nw On behalf of Canonical and the Ubuntu Technical Board, Scott James Remnant has issued a position statement surrounding Mono, the open-source project that provides a C# compiler for Linux (along with other operating systems) and other components for a free software .NET stack. However, the legality of Mono is frequently a key concern to free software advocates considering patents and other intellectual property that's owned by Microsoft. Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:22:07 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1Ng http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1Ng With the forthcoming Linux 2.6.31 kernel there is finally Radeon kernel mode-setting support so that those running ATI graphics cards on Linux will be able to experience a cleaner boot process, faster VT switching, improved security, and other overdue features for Linux. Using kernel mode-setting with ATI Radeon hardware will require a supported kernel that is built with the appropriate kernel configuration options. In addition, an updated DDX driver is also necessary so it realizes the kernel is handling the mode-setting process. Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:39:20 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1NQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1NQ VirtualBox 3.0 has been in beta for less than a month, but Sun Microsystems has now decided to officially release this major update to their virtualization software. Most notably, VirtualBox 3.0 finally brings support for SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing) to guest operating systems. Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:28:28 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1NA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1NA Finally, the Mozilla Foundation has announced the official release of Mozilla Firefox 3.5. This sizable open-source browser update (formerly known as Firefox 3.1) brings HTML 5 support, a new JavaScript engine (a.k.a. Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:15:36 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1Mw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1Mw Earlier this month we reported on Linux support for a new, unreleased Intel IGP after several commits hit the Intel driver's X.Org DDX driver (xf86-video-intel). This code added a new mobile and desktop component but of course not many details regarding this next-generation Intel graphics processor have been revealed. Within the code this new chip is currently referred to as IGDNG, which we take to mean Intel Graphics Device Next Generation. Recently more work for IGDNG has landed within Intel's mainline DDX driver tree. Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:33:21 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1Mg http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1Mg Keith Packard has been the release manager for the X Server 1.6 series and back in early May he issued an X Server 1.6.2 release cadndidate to close a few more X.Org bugs in this critical piece of software. After pulling in another heaping of bug fixes, Keith has now announced X Server 1.6.2 Release Candidate 2, which will go on to become the official 1.6.2 release assuming no bugs or regressions appear. In X Server 1.6.2 are over 36 bug fixes that address a variety of different problems from DRI2 to EDID to fixing up other problems. Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:17:59 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1MQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1MQ After having gone to the community for looking at names, Red Hat has announced that the release of Fedora 12 will be codenamed Constantine. This name had the most votes and was approved by Red Hat's Legal department of being free of any potential issues. Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:06:34 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1MA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM1MA The release of Mesa 7.5.0, which is the first version of this open-source 3D stack to include support for Gallium3D, is running a bit behind schedule. Fortunately, however, Brian Paul has pushed out what is the fourth (and final) release candidate for the 7.5 series. Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:24:12 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0OQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0OQ Quite a lot has made its way into the Linux 2.6.31 kernel, particularly Radeon kernel mode-setting and the new TTM GPU memory manager, but now the merge window for this release cycle is closing. Linus Torvalds last night released Linux 2.6.31-rc1 as the first test release of this new code. Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:45:39 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0OA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0OA Earlier this month VirtualBox 3.0 Beta 1 was introduced by Sun Microsystems, which brought OpenGL 2.0 support for virtualized guests along with SMP support for guest operating systems. There were other notable changes present too. Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:37:00 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0Nw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0Nw Last month we were excited over the release of a OpenVG state tracker and OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 state trackers for Gallium3D along with confirmation that OpenCL and OpenGL 3.1 state trackers are under development. Neither of these new state trackers have yet to arrive, but just committed to the Mesa repository is a new Gallium3D driver. Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:25:00 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0Ng http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0Ng There have already been a few DRM pull requests to go into the Linux 2.6.31 kernel for making better the Linux graphics driver stack, but David Airlie now looks to have one more last minute pull before the merge window closes. David has called upon Linus to pull in his latest set of DRM changes, which contains fixes for the biggest DRM addition to the 2.6.31 kernel: Radeon kernel mode-setting (along with the new TTM memory manager). Besides having ATI KMS fixes, this DRM code now also contains the Intel DisplayPort support. Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:04:29 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0NQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0NQ Last week the first ten Ubuntu paper cuts were exposed via Launchpad, which are small annoying usability problems with Ubuntu (and upstream applications) that are quite easy to address but simply have not been carried out. In time for the release of Ubuntu 9.10, Canonical hopes to have 100 of these "paper cuts" addressed. Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:57:09 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0NA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0NA The latest stable NVIDIA Linux driver release is in the 185.xx series, but NVIDIA developers have been hard at work on the forthcoming 190.xx driver series. Among other features, this next major driver update is expected to bring their talked about OpenCL support. It will probably be some weeks still before NVIDIA even publicly releases a Linux driver in the 190.xx series, but currently for those that are under NDA with NVIDIA, they have early access as a registered developer. Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:25:56 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0Mw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0Mw Canonical's X.Org guy, Bryce Harrington, has announced the switch to using Intel kernel mode-setting by default beginning with the new Linux 2.6.30 kernel update that was just committed to the Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" repository. Cheers! For those unfamiliar with what Intel kernel mode-setting means or would like more information, check out the mailing list announcement. Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:19:03 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0Mg http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM0Mg For managing network and Internet connections from the Linux desktop, used by most distribution vendors is NetworkManager, which is a well rounded network connection manager from Red Hat for controlling wired, wireless, and mobile broadband devices. The ModemManager project was even spun off recently for furthering the mobile broadband support on Linux. Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:09:29 CDT