Clear Linux Now Riding On Linux 4.8.1, Ships AVX2-Optimized Python

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Clear Linux Now Riding On Linux 4.8.1, Ships AVX2-Optimized Python

Intel's Clear Linux open-source operating system continues advancing as one of the less heard of but highly performant rolling-release distributions for servers, cloud, containers, and other applications...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Clear-Linux-4-Update

[eydee]

Still no sign of AMD's Dirty Linux. Where's competition?

[edwaleni]

Still no sign of AMD's Dirty Linux. Where's competition?

AMD is counting their pennies until Zen gets out the door. Why waste their precious dollars on AV products (McAfee), defunct wireless standards (WiMax) and non-competitive mobility products (Atom) along with a Linux build?

As long as AMD supports the same instructions Intel is supplying, who cares whose Linux it is.

I kind of like the idea that a CPU maker is pushing the Linux envelope.

When I asked a vendor if their product had AVX2 support, I got the deer eyes and crickets.

Intel spent millions developing the hardware, now they are spending millions to get people to actually use it.

Push on!

[Serafean]

How exactly are they enabling AVX instructions? Recompiling with -mavx(2)? or patching the code?

[starshipeleven]

How exactly are they enabling AVX instructions? Recompiling with -mavx(2)? or patching the code?

Obviously recompiling. We are in opensource world.

[starshipeleven]

Still no sign of AMD's Dirty Linux. Where's competition?

Uhhhhhhh.... Dirty Linux..... In black and red, maybe a whip in the symbol.... Sounds sexy.

[geearf]

Still no sign of AMD's Dirty Linux. Where's competition?

It's Clear not Clean.
So opposites would be Foggy, Vague, etc

[Serafean]

Obviously recompiling. We are in opensource world.

Actually not so obvious. I don't know where to find their buildscripts.
There are a few things they could be doing :
- Simple recompile with -march=xxx
- recompile with "random" other flags (like for instance -msse2avx which transfroms SSE instructions to AVX instructions)
- patch code with pure assembler
- patch code to give compiler better hints to use vectorized instructions (and optimize cache usage and whatnot).

[riklaunim]

I wonder if i7-5500U would be a good for Clear Linux? It's not Skylake so less wayland support, but still, an Intel-only laptop

[uid313]

Does Ubuntu 16.10 have Linux 4.8.0, 4.8.1 or 4.8.2?

It's name is something like 4.8.0-22.24. Not sure exactly how to interpret that.