The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) that integrates with Fwupd for delivering firmware updates primarily to Linux users is surging with around three times the normal traffic volume. Unfortunately, this boost in traffic appears to be due to vendor(s) releasing new system firmware updates ahead of disclosing a presumptive security issue.
At the end of last year AMD introduced OpenGL sparse texture support into its RadeonSI Gallium3D driver. This functionality for Vega GPUs and newer flipped on ARB_sparse_texture support while now with the very latest Mesa 22.0-devel code ARB_sparse_texture2 is now flipped on too.
The Qt Company this morning announced Qt Digital Advertising 1.0 as its new ad platform that allows for developers to easily integrate advertising campaigns into Qt-based, cross-platform applications.
NVIDIA has released CUDA 11.6 as the latest version of their widely used but proprietary GPU compute stack. With CUDA 11.6 there are some good improvements and new features in store.
A change merged overnight with the libata subsystem updates for Linux 5.17 means that some older AMD hardware will be able to boot quicker by avoiding an otherwise mandated sleep period.
Back in November memory folios were merged into Linux 5.16 as a fundamental change to the memory management code. Now for Linux 5.17 there are improvements for folios merged and then out likely for Linux 5.18 is introducing the notion of large folios.
The alpha release of GNOME 42 is now available for testing.
GCC 12 as this year's annual GNU Compiler Collection feature release has moved on to "stage four" development with likely releasing GCC 12.1 in April.
Last September I was the first to call attention to Intel working on a new feature to allow updating some system firmware components without needing to reboot such as for mission critical servers that try to avoid downtime at all costs. That Intel "Seamless Update" feature also known as Platform Firmware Runtime Update and Telemetry (PFRUT) has now been sent in for mainlining with Linux 5.17.
FFmpeg 5.0 has now been formally christened as for what is aiming to be a Long-Term Support (LTS) release for this widely-used, cross-platform and open-source multimedia library.
Jason Ekstrand who was the lead developer of Intel's open-source "ANV" Vulkan Linux driver left Intel in December and has now revealed details about his new role.
For those considering the Lenovo USB-C 7-in-1 Hub for connecting to your Lenovo laptop for enjoying USB-C power charging, HDMI output, and additional USB ports, it does work out on Linux. While there have been some users running into seemingly firmware-related issues, at least with my testing over the past month this $50~60 (USD) USB-C hub has been working out well under Linux.
A new tool added to the kernel source tree with Linux 5.17 is rtla to serve for real-time Linux performance and tracing analysis.
In addition to Linux 5.17 introducing Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) support for that new industry standard for styluses/pens that can work cross-device, the input subsystem updates for this kernel also add active pen support for a few more tablets.
Miguel Ojeda has published his third iteration of the patches implementing the basic infrastructure for supporting the Rust programming language within the Linux kernel.
For those wanting a desktop-friendly, easy-to-use BSD operating system to try out the GhostBSD project is one of the better bets in modern times. GhostBSD 22.01.12 is now available with a variety of fixes and improvements for this desktop-minded BSD.
The Linux kernel's frame-buffer device "FBDEV" subsystem has thankfully been on the decline over the past number of years thanks to the success of the more useful DRM/KMS drivers and having FBDEV compatibility emulation support. While not actively maintained, the FBDEV subsystem and some drivers remain within the Linux kernel and are used with some interest primarily in some legacy/embedded environments. The subsystem was orphaned while now a Linux kernel developer has stepped up to serve as its maintainer.
It's been over two years since Mumble 1.3 was released for this open-source VoIP / voice chat program that is popular with gamers and open-source enthusiasts while today it's been succeeded by Mumble 1.4.
Disclosed a few months back were "Trojan Source" attacks against compilers where specially crafted code could be rogue but not appear so due to exploiting Unicode issues. Unicode control characters could be used to reorder tokens in source code that could alter the behavior when compiled. With the upcoming GCC 12 compiler release there is a new warning to help point out possible Trojan Source attacks.
Sent in to the Linux kernel on Friday were the "char/misc" updates as the smorgasbord of kernel changes not fitting formally within other areas of the kernel. The char/misc changes range from AI accelerator driver updates to new Xilinx code to other random changes littered throughout.
Those wanting to enjoy some impressive Vulkan ray-traced visuals on Linux (and macOS or Windows) now have GravityMark to add to the list of Linux-native ray-traced software for testing.
Merged into Linux 5.17 this weekend is the Google-developed Page Table Check feature that can help combat some forms of memory corruption.
A new version of JACK2 is available this weekend, the latest version of this cross-platform, professional sound server.
Cemu as one of the leading Nintendo Wii U video game emulators is planning to go open-source this year and is also working on Linux support and related cross-platform advancements.
The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes for Linux 5.17 bring several feature additions.
Intel ended out the week with a huge update to ISPC, the Intel Implicit SPMD Program Compiler. ISPC is Intel's LLVM-based compiler focused on its C variant with extensions for single program, multiple data (SPMD) programming. Interestingly with this release is the introduction of AMD Zen 1/2/3 targeting and even the PlayStation 5 while also adding support for forthcoming Intel Arc "Alchemist" (Xe HPG) hardware.
The sound subsystem updates have been merged into the Linux 5.17 kernel with a few notable hardware driver additions this cycle.
Libvirt 8.0 has been released for this open-source Virtualization API and associated daemon/tools for managing KVM, Xen, and other hypervisors.
The PCI subsystem updates for the in-development Linux 5.17 kernel have been submitted to Linus.
In addition to shipping Plasma 5.24 beta this week, KDE developers remained busy working on Plasma 5.24 as well as other KDE desktop components.
Wine 7.0 is inching towards release but for this week is the seventh weekly release candidate.
FFmpeg 5.0 is out today as a shiny feature update to this widely-used open-source audio/video handling suite.
Mesa's V3D and V3DV drivers providing open-source OpenGL and Vulkan driver support, respectively, for newer Broadcom VideoCore hardware now has a double buffer mode implemented. This is a win for numerous workloads for these drivers most notably used by modern Raspberry Pi single board computers.
The Qt Company just announced Qt 6.3 Alpha as the first formal test release for this next Qt6 toolkit update. The Qt Company also lifted the lid on their new Qt Quick Compiler where they are aiming for QML to run at "a speed close to native" for that interpreted language.
It turns out Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is planning to use the Linux 5.15 kernel as its default kernel. It makes sense in that Linux 5.15 is also a long-term support kernel, but unfortunate in that Ubuntu LTS releases haven't always used LTS kernel versions and v5.15 will be a half-year old already by the time the "Jammy Jellyfish" ships in April. This is a choice particularly unfortunate for those with recent hardware but at least there is the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA and other non-default options available.
In addition to Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers being quite busy preparing for upcoming Intel Arc "Alchemist" (DG2) graphics cards on the consumer side, they have concurrently been preparing for Xe HP "Ponte Vecchio" hardware too. One of the big undertakings on that side from the driver perspective is bringing up multiple tiles.
While the MIPS CPU architecture itself is at the end of the road, kernel developers still are busy with MIPS considering the Loongson hardware that is popular in China and lots of older MIPS hardware out there lacking mainline Linux kernel support. For Linux 5.17 several more older, consumer-grade network routers are seeing mainline support.
A draft merge request has been opened for landing "Copper" within Mesa.
Landing this week as part of the various subsystems overseen by Linux's second-in-command Greg Kroah-Hartman were the USB changes for Linux 5.17.
Back in 2019 the Linux kernel deprecated a.out support for that file format used several decades ago before ELF tookover. Now in 2022 it looks like that a.out code will be removed from the kernel.
Lead Fwupd/LVFS developer Richard Hughes of Red Hat today released v1.7.4 for this open-souce utility to allow firmware updating on Linux of system motherboards and peripherals.
While we are very eager for Godot 4.0 with everything that this open-source game engine is going to deliver on, Godot 3.5 beta is out today and is a rather nice interim step forward.
KDE has made available the beta of the upcoming Plasma 5.24 desktop update ahead of its planned stable release on 8 February.
Samsung in partnership with Tesla has posted a set of 23 patches for enabling Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) SoC for the mainline Linux kernel.
Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers have now committed the DG2/Alchemist graphics card PCI IDs and device information data to Mesa 22.0 for their OpenGL and Vulkan driver support, but for now until the Linux kernel support is baked this is disabled.
Back in 2020 Microsoft announced the DXGKRNL driver as the kernel driver component for supporting GPU accelerated use-cases within Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2). That original DXGKRNL driver was quickly shot down by upstream kernel developers and various issues raised while now for the past year Microsoft has been reworking this kernel driver and on Wednesday published the new version.
Being worked on since early 2020 by Red Hat's David Howells has been a rewrite to Linux's FS-Cache and CacheFiles code focusing on making it smaller and simpler while also presenting possible memory/performance advantages. That major rewrite has been merged now for Linux 5.17.
Ubuntu developers have laid out their GNOME versioning plans for this spring's release of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
While a lot of open-source OpenGL and Vulkan driver improvements have been landing in recent days in anticipation of the Mesa 22.0 code branching and feature freeze for Wednesday, that deadline has now been extended by three weeks.