Svobodný software

Since last year Canonical had been investigating using -O3 compiler optimizations for their Ubuntu package builds in the name of delivering better performance for Ubuntu Linux. A few weeks back though they decided they would not use -O3 optimizations for all packages. They have now provided more engineering insight into their reasoning and the results of their investigation into -O3 compiler optimizations for more packages...

A two year old Intel Mesa merge request was finally merged for Mesa 25.1 today for enabling functionality on DG2/Alchemist GPUs and newer...

All of the HID subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 6.15 merge window...

Set to be merged for the Linux 6.15 kernel is the very initial NOVA driver core code that will be incrementally built up over time in succeeding kernel versions. For Linux 6.15, this open-source NVIDIA kernel driver isn't of any use for end-users as it's just the very preliminary pieces to begin crafting the foundation for the driver that is leveraging the NVIDIA GSP found with Turing and newer hardware. In preparation for future kernel cycles, the NOVA skeleton driver pieces were posted for review yesterday to begin fleshing out more of the driver's design...

Prakticky všechny filmy na DVD discích od Warner Bros z let 2006 až 2008 odcházejí. Warneři se k tomu stavějí čelem, nicméně ne vždy existuje uspokojivé řešení. Pomíjivost fyzických věcí se tak opět naplno ukazuje.

The many SoC and DeviceTree updates have now been merged for the Linux 6.15 kernel merge window. There's a lot on the ARM hardware side plus some additions for RISC-V and various interesting new device/board additions...

The Ubuntu 25.04 "Plucky Puffin" beta is now available for testing ahead of the official release set for 17 April...

Ted Ts'o at Google has sent out the EXT4 file-system updates for the in-development Linux 6.15 kernel...

Ubuntu 25.04 beta is set to be released today and thus this week I've begun testing out the latest Ubuntu 25.04 builds on different systems for seeing how this six-month Ubuntu Linux update is looking compared to the prior Ubuntu 24.10 release. In this first Ubuntu 25.04 beta benchmarking article is a look at the performance using an AMD Ryzen 9000 series desktop and Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics.

It's not only FreeDesktop.org that has been transitioning to new infrastructure this month but separately, Kernel.org is now receiving hosting and CDN needs provided by Akamai...

Linux 6.15 keeps getting more exciting... The big Zstd update has landed! The in-kernel Zstandard compression code is finally re-based against the newer upstream state that brings better performance as well as new APIs for allowing Intel QAT acceleration by Intel hardware offering QuickAssist Technology. This Zstd code is relied upon by Btrfs transparent file-system compression and other in-kernel users for compression/decompression...

The printk changes submitted for the Linux 6.15 kernel introduce a new "NULL_TTY_DEFAULT_CONSOLE" Kconfig build-time option for allowing the null TTY to be the default for those building the Linux kernel without virtual terminal (VT) support...

As a very exciting improvement for the open-source PostgreSQL database server, it has merged initial support for making use of IO_uring on Linux servers for asynchronous I/O and can provide for some nice performance improvements...

Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE has submitted all the feature updates slated for Linux 6.15. There is a lot of new audio hardware support and other enhancements that are now merged for this next kernel release...

Earlier this month Mesa deprecated the Clover OpenCL driver in favor of the modern Rust-written Rusticl Gallium3D state tracker. Clover is expected to be removed in Q3's Mesa 25.2 release while today the RadeonSI driver has decided to preemptively remove its Clover support...

NVIDIA has published new Vulkan beta driver builds for Windows and Linux that introduce VK_KHR_shader_bfloat16 for BFloat16 "BF16" support within shaders...

Jarní vydání GNOME přináší velkou dávku novinek. Asi tou největší je dlouho připravovaná podpora HDR a správa barev na Waylandu. Po mnoha letech se ale mění také výchozí písmo a uživatele potěší sdružování upozornění podle aplikací.

Dnes si popíšeme a zejména otestujeme vybrané instrukce ze sady SSE2. Řekneme si, jaký je rozdíl mezi trojicí PAND, ANDNPS a ANDPD, způsob provedení bitových a bajtových posunů, ale i specifické vlastnosti vybraných konverzních instrukcí.

Submitted today for upstreaming into the Linux 6.15 kernel is support for the Versal NET SoC, an addition to the AMD/Xilinx Versal family that doesn't appear to have been talked about much publicly yet but should be an interesting addition to their product line-up...

Microsoft last year announced the open-source Hyperlight project as an embedded VMM for use as a micro-VM manager of sorts that can be run within Windows and Linux applications. This VM-based security for small embedded functions now has its scope expanded with the open-source release today of Hyperlight Wasm for bringing in WebAssembly to the party...