Free Software News Archives


1,902 Free Software open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

OpenColorIO 2.3 Released With New AVX/AVX2 Optimizations
OpenColorIO 2.3 Released With New AVX/AVX2 Optimizations

OpenColorIO (OCIO) as the open-source color management solution for motion picture production and maintained by the Academy Software Foundation is out with a new feature release that will be part of their 2024 VFX Reference Platform. Notable with this release are new SIMD optimizations with AVX/AVX2 and Arm NEON.

1 September 2023 - OpenColorIO 2.3 - 11 Comments
Firefox 117 Beta 8 vs. Google Chrome 116 Linux Browser Performance
Firefox 117 Beta 8 vs. Google Chrome 116 Linux Browser Performance

Given all the interest this week in Firefox outperforming Google Chrome in SunSpider, I decided to run some fresh Linux desktop web browser benchmarks on my end. For today's comparison is a look at the newly-released Chrome 116 up against Firefox 117b8 that will be released as stable in just over one week.

18 August 2023 - Browser Benchmarks - 73 Comments
Linux Containers Forks LXD Project As "Incus"
Linux Containers Forks LXD Project As "Incus"

Following Canonical deciding to pull in control of the LXD project and LXD maintainership being limited to Canonical employees, the Linux Containers project has announced the forking of LXD as Incus.

7 August 2023 - Incus - 27 Comments
Sourceware Looking To Expand Services, Diversify Partners
Sourceware Looking To Expand Services, Diversify Partners

Sourceware.org that provides the open-source hosting for projects like GCC, Cygwin, and more had long been sponsored by Red Hat and a rather opaque organization. Earlier this year SourceWare.org became part of the Software Freedom Conservancy. In addition to now calling the SFC home, they are planning other changes ahead to expand their hosting services, diversifying hardware and software partners, and other changes.

7 August 2023 - Sourceware.org - Add A Comment
Richard Hughes Developing New "Passim" Local Caching Server
Richard Hughes Developing New "Passim" Local Caching Server

Richard Hughes is the Red Hat developer who is most prominently known for leading the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) and Fwupd development as well as formerly being behind the ColorHug monitor color calibration hardware effort and PackageKit, among other open-source software. He's recently been developing a new software project called Passim that today he announced to the world.

28 July 2023 - Passim - 11 Comments
Meson 1.2 Build System Released
Meson 1.2 Build System Released

Meson 1.2 was released on Sunday as the newest feature release for this wildly popular, cross-platform build system that has become widely used by open-source projects as a superior alternative to GNU Automake and other solutions.

17 July 2023 - Meson 1.2 - 2 Comments
Tow-Boot Downstream Of U-Boot Updated After Long Hiatus
Tow-Boot Downstream Of U-Boot Updated After Long Hiatus

Tow-Boot has been a "user-friendly" distribution of U-Boot that was seeing regular updates but for nearly one year has been on hiatus without any new releases. That changed overnight with Tow-Boot 2022.07-006 being released and a call for new developers.

6 July 2023 - Tow-Boot - 7 Comments
UPower 1.90.1 Released As First Update In A Year
UPower 1.90.1 Released As First Update In A Year

Released yesterday was a new version of UPower, the FreeDesktop.org software known long ago as DeviceKit-Power and used as an abstraction layer for enumerating power devices on Linux and other platforms. The new UPower 1.90.1 release is the first update to this software in just shy of one year.

5 July 2023 - UPower 1.90.1 - Add A Comment
The 2023 State of The Embedded Linux Ecosystem
The 2023 State of The Embedded Linux Ecosystem

This past week at the Linux Foundation's Embedded Open-Source Summit in Prague, Sony engineer Tim Bird who is prominent in the embedded Linux community provided another insightful presentation to sum up the current state of the embedded Linux ecosystem.

2 July 2023 - Embedded Linux - 1 Comment
GIMP 3.0 Release Candidates Hoped For This Year
GIMP 3.0 Release Candidates Hoped For This Year

There's been hopes of seeing the GIMP 3.0 release in 2023 or at least release candidates. GIMP developers recently finished a week-long meet-up and it's looking like they may be on track for at least beginning the GIMP 3.0 release candidate phase this year. GIMP 3.0 has remained quite elusive and in the works for the past decade as the much anticipated port to GTK3 and a host of other enhancements to this open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

29 June 2023 - GIMP 3.0 Release Candidates - 42 Comments
PoCL 4.0 OpenCL Implementation Released With Intel oneAPI Level Zero Driver
PoCL 4.0 OpenCL Implementation Released With Intel oneAPI Level Zero Driver

PoCL 4.0 is out as the latest major update to this "Portable Computing Language" implementation that started out as an OpenCL-on-CPU effort while with time has expanded its sights beyond just OpenCL on processors to providing OpenCL on other accelerators/devices via leveraging different LLVM target back-ends. With PoCL 4.0, there is also now an Intel oneAPI Level Zero driver for using this OpenCL stack on Intel graphics processors.

22 June 2023 - Portable Computing Language 4.0 - 1 Comment
Bug Bounty Programs May Sound Great, But Aren't Always Handled Well
Bug Bounty Programs May Sound Great, But Aren't Always Handled Well

Bug bounty programs setup by large corporations to reward and recognize security researchers for properly reporting new bugs and security vulnerabilities is a great concept, but in practice isn't always handled well. Security researcher Adam Zabrocki recently shared the troubles he encountered in the bug bounty handling at Google for Chrome OS and in turn for Intel with it having been an i915 Linux kernel graphics driver vulnerability.

18 May 2023 - Google + Intel Bug Bounty Experience - 13 Comments
Sourceware Now Part Of The Software Freedom Conservancy
Sourceware Now Part Of The Software Freedom Conservancy

Following the SFC vote last year for accepting Sourceware.org into the conservancy, everything is all set now and Sourceware.org is now officially part of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Red Hat was traditionally the long-time sponsor of Sourceware.org that hosts many open-source projects like GCC and Cygwin.

15 May 2023 - Sourceware.org - 1 Comment
memtest86+ 6.20 Released With Improved Support For Older Systems
memtest86+ 6.20 Released With Improved Support For Older Systems

Last October marked the release of memtest86+ 6.0 as a rewrite of this long-used, open-source bootable RAM testing software. In February marked memtest86+ 6.10 with UEFI Secure Boot signing and other new features. Out today is now memtest86+ 6.20 where a driving focus for this release is on improving support for older hardware.

7 May 2023 - memtest86+ 6.20 - 11 Comments
OpenMoonRay 1.1 Released For DreamWorks' Open-Source Renderer
OpenMoonRay 1.1 Released For DreamWorks' Open-Source Renderer

Last year DreamWorks announced they would be open-sourcing their award-winning MoonRay renderer. Back in March that dream was realized with OpenMoonRay being published for this renderer that has been used for films like Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, The Bad Guys, How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, and other films. OpenMoonRay 1.1 is now available as the first update to this professional renderer since it was open-sourced last quarter.

2 May 2023 - OpenMoonRay 1.1 - 2 Comments
Chinese GPU Vendor Moore Threads Contributing To VA-API, FFmpeg
Chinese GPU Vendor Moore Threads Contributing To VA-API, FFmpeg

Moore Threads was established in 2020 to create domestic GPU solutions in China with their first products having been announced last year. Most of the talk around Moore Threads "MThreads" GPUs have been for Windows but they are working on Linux support to at least some extent.

17 April 2023 - MThreads VA-API - 47 Comments
FSF Slams Google Over Dropping JPEG-XL In Chrome
FSF Slams Google Over Dropping JPEG-XL In Chrome

Last October Google engineers decided they would deprecate JPEG-XL support in Chrome over some debated rationale for the move. Even amid the community uproar they went ahead to drop the JPEG-XL support. The Free Software Foundation has finally commented on the matter.

16 April 2023 - JPEG-XL Deprecation - 105 Comments
Servo Project To Focus On Their "Layout 2020" Engine
Servo Project To Focus On Their "Layout 2020" Engine

Servo as the browser engine started at Mozilla but now developed as a Linux Foundation project has been maintaining two separate layout engines and moving forward they hope to be able to focus on the newer "Layout 2020" engine and fill in its missing gaps.

13 April 2023 - Servo + Layout 2020 - 13 Comments

1902 Free Software news articles published on Phoronix.