The Rest Of The Year Should Be Super Exciting For Linux Enthusiasts

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 1 October 2015 at 11:05 AM EDT. 18 Comments
HARDWARE
While last quarter was exciting for Linux users as was all of the open-source activity last month, this final quarter of 2015 is looking to be even more exciting for Linux enthusiasts.

Among the events we have to look forward to in the next three months include:

- Vulkan!!! The initial Vulkan specification should be made public "before the end of the year" as the last official communication while some unofficial chatter I've heard is putting it towards a potential early November debut. Once the Vulkan specification is out, there will be the open-source Intel driver, NVIDIA's proprietary Vulkan driver, and the closed-at-first AMD Vulkan Linux driver. SPIR-V 1.0 should also be firmed up as part of the Vulkan specification.

- Next month is when Valve's Steam Controller and the Steam Machines will begin to ship! Hopefully they will be a success and drive up the Steam Linux market-share with being powered by the Debian-based SteamOS.

- There's more top-notch Steam Linux game ports to look forward to, such as Alien: Isolation and America's Army.

- More Intel Skylake hardware should become available.

- Hopefully Intel's Mesa driver hitting OpenGL 4.0~4.2 support and the Radeon/Nouveau Gallium3D drivers hitting OpenGL 4.2+.

- Linux 4.3 will be released with its many new features.

- Linux 4.4 is building up for development and will hopefully have AMDGPU re-clocking support for TONGA and Fiji, among many other kernel-level improvements.

- Ubuntu 15.10 and Fedora 23 will be officially released.

Am I missing out on anything else? What else do you hope will happen in the Linux/open-source world in Q4?
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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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