ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Initial Raspberry Pi 5 Support & More Snapdragon X1 Laptops Submitted For Linux 6.12

([Arm] 16 September 04:00 PM EDT ARM SoC Updates)

All of the ARM SoC and platform updates have been sent out for the Linux 6.12 merge window. Exciting this cycle is finally having initial support for the Raspberry Pi 5 plus supporting several more Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops.


Replay Protected Memory Block "RPMB" Subsystem Submitted For Linux 6.12

([Linux Storage] 16 September 03:00 PM EDT Replay Protected Memory Block)

The MMC updates for the Linux 6.12 kernel include the introduction of a new kernel subsystem for Replay Protected Memory Block (RPMB) drivers.


A Re-Implementation Of The EROFS File-System In Rust Has Started

([Linux Storage] 16 September 01:00 PM EDT EROFS + Rust)

The EROFS read-only open-source file-system has seen initial patches posted today for beginning to re-implement the C code within the Rust programming language for better safety guarantees and the possibility of more performance optimizations.


Idea Raised For Reducing The Size Of The AMDGPU Driver With Its Massive Header Files

([Radeon] 16 September 11:30 AM EDT Moving To External Repo)

Following the weekend news of the AMDGPU kernel driver becoming too large that it's causing the Plymouth boot splash screen on slower Linux systems to time-out, longtime AMD Linux graphics driver engineer Marek Olšák expressed a new idea for helping to reduce some bloat from this AMD kernel graphics driver.


GNU Linux-libre 6.11 Makes Adaptations For Rust, Warns Of Hidden Binary Bits In v6.11

([GNU] 16 September 09:32 AM EDT GNU Linux-libre 6.11-gnu)

Building off yesterday's Linux 6.11 release, the GNU Linux-libre 6.11-gnu kernel is now available that is the downstream stripping out driver support/features depending upon closed-source microcode/firmware and other modifications in the name of software freedom and ensuring no closed-source bits are used on Linux-libre-enabled systems.


AmpereOne Performance With GCC vs. LLVM Clang Compilers

([Software] 16 September 09:49 AM EDT 10 Comments)

While having the Supermicro ARS-211M-NR R13SPD server in the lab for AmpereOne benchmarking with the flagship AmpereOne A192-32X processor, I took the opportunity to run some fresh GCC vs. LLVM Clang compiler performance benchmarks on AArch64. Here are those results for that healthy competition between these open-source C/C++ compilers on AmpereOne cores.


The File Struct Is Smaller In Linux 6.12 - May Help File Heavy Workloads

([Linux Kernel] 16 September 06:30 AM EDT Optimizing File Struct)

The file structure is one of the most widely-used data structures by Linux kernel drivers. The file struct represents an open file and thus obviously very important and ubiquitous throughout the kernel. With the Linux 6.12 kernel the file struct has been adjusted so it's smaller than before and in turn could help with performance for file-heavy workloads.


TamaGo Allows Executing Go Language Code Bare Metal On ARM/RISC-V SoCs

([Programming] 16 September 06:00 AM EDT TamaGo)

Presented earlier this month at the Open-Source Firmware Conference was TamaGo as a means of running Go programming language code bare metal on Arm SoCs as well as eyeing RISC-V too. TamaGo can allow for "0% C and 100% Go code" for ARM/RISC-V device firmware to enhance security.


Linux 6.12 EDAC Prepares For Address Translation On Future AMD Platforms

([AMD] 16 September 05:00 AM EDT Linux 6.12 EDAC / RAS)

The Error Detection And Correction (EDAC) driver updates were among the early pull requests submitted for the Linux 6.12 kernel cycle in advance of this week's Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit in Austria. Among the EDAC work this cycle is preparing memory address translation support for future AMD platforms.


Linux 6.12 To Support Arm's Permission Overlay Extension

([Arm] 16 September 12:00 AM EDT Arm Confidential Computing)

The 64-bit ARM changes were submitted in advance for the now-open Linux 6.12 kernel merge window. There is work for Arm on the confidential computing side this cycle and other new features.


Valkey 8.0 Released As Speedy Redis Fork Achieving One Million RPS

([Programming] 15 September 08:25 PM EDT Valkey 8.0)

Valkey 8.0 was released today as this leading fork of the Redis open-source code that was started by the Linux Foundation early in the year and backed by organizations from Amazon/AWS to Google Cloud, Oracle, and others. With the Valkey 8.0 release a big focus has been on increasing performance and striving to being capable of delivering one million requests per second.


IO_uring Async Discard Submitted For Linux 6.12

([Linux Storage] 15 September 03:51 PM EDT IO_uring async discard)

Jens Axboe submitted the block and IO_uring changes already for the now-open Linux 6.12 merge window. Most notable from this Linux I/O work is adding async discard support to IO_uring.


Linux 6.11 Kernel Released With Some Snapdragon X1 Laptop Support & Other New Hardware

([Linux Kernel] 15 September 11:12 AM EDT Linux 6.11)

As expected the Linux 6.11 kernel has been promoted to stable and in time for appearing in the likes of Ubuntu 24.10, Fedora 41, and other autumn Linux distribution releases.


Linux 6.11 Features Many Exciting Updates For AMD Hardware & More

([Linux Kernel] 15 September 09:03 AM EDT Linux 6.11 Updates)

It's expected to be the Linux 6.11 release day! We are just hours away from hopefully seeing Linux 6.11 stable christened as the kernel set to power the likes of Ubuntu 24.10 and Fedora 41. Here's a reminder of some of the most interesting new features and changes to look forward to with Linux 6.11.


AMD GPU Linux Driver Becoming "Really Really Big" That It's Starting To Cause Problems

([Radeon] 15 September 06:00 AM EDT AMDGPU Driver)

The modern AMD kernel graphics driver "AMDGPU" is the biggest driver within the mainline Linux kernel and is approaching six million lines of code albeit a large chunk of that is made up of auto-generated header files for each supported GPU. But this AMDGPU kernel driver is becoming "really really big" that it's beginning to cause issues for Plymouth that commonly provides the initial boot splash screen experience on modern Linux desktops.


Legacy Intel Sound Driver Support Being Removed In Linux 6.12, Other Big Changes

([Multimedia] 15 September 05:00 AM EDT Linux 6.12 Sound)

Yet another early pull request for the imminent Linux 6.12 merge window is the sound (audio) driver updates for this next kernel cycle. There is a lot of sound driver work this cycle from new audio bits to removing legacy Intel driver support.


Many ACPI Updates Head To The Linux 6.12 Kernel

([Hardware] 15 September 04:00 AM EDT Linux 6.12 ACPI Updates)

Ahead of the expected Linux 6.11 stable release today and the Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit happening this coming week in Vienna, Intel engineer Rafael Wysocki submitted early the ACPI updates among the other areas of the kernel he oversees as part of the imminent Linux 6.12 merge window.


Ubuntu Developers Begin Working On Snapdragon X1 Elite Support

([Ubuntu] 15 September 12:00 AM EDT Snapdragon X1 + Ubuntu)

With the mainline Linux kernel beginning to see DeviceTree support for a few Snapdragon X1 powered laptops like the ASUS Vivobook S15 and Lenovo Yoga Slim7x, Ubuntu developers at Canonical appear to be beginning their exploration around supporting some of the Snapdragon X1 hardware with Ubuntu Linux.


Linux 6.11 Adds Last Minute Addition For Intel Arrow Lake

([Intel] 14 September 03:57 PM EDT Pin Control)

The Linux 6.11 kernel is expected to be christened as stable tomorrow. Ahead of that stable release one of the last minute "fixes" is adding in another ID for upcoming Intel Arrow Lake processors.


GNOME Mutter Merges XDG Session Management Wayland Protocol

([GNOME] 14 September 10:33 AM EDT XDG Session Management)

As a very last minute change ahead of tagging GNOME Mutter 47, merged this morning to Mutter is support for the XDG session management Wayland protocol. This protocol is useful for letting clients request support from the compositor for saving the window state for use on future executions. However, it's currently disabled by default and won't be entirely baked until GNOME 48.


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At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"