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)

Firefox 157 Now Available With Visual Refresh, WebRTC Hardware AV1 Decode

([Mozilla] 28 September 10:46 AM EDT Firefox 157)

As part of the Mozilla Firefox bi-weekly release regiment, the Firefox 157 binaries are now available for this open-source web browser.



Flatpak 1.18.4 Released With Important Security Fixes

([Desktop] 28 September 09:20 AM EDT Flatpak 1.18.4)

Flatpak 1.18.4 is out today with a number of high profile security fixes for this app sandboxing and distribution tech.



NVIDIA Vera SMT Performance Benchmarks

([Processors] 28 September 08:54 AM EDT 25 Comments)

Recently I was provided remote access to a NVIDIA Vera server with the dual socket Vera CPU Superchip providing 176 Olympus cores plus with NVIDIA's Spatial Multithreading "SMT" implementation providing 352 total threads. With this benchmarking was free rein for testing, including CPU power and frequency monitoring. Over the next few weeks will be a number of articles looking at different areas of NVIDIA Vera performance. One of the areas I was most eager to test was looking at Vera's Spatial Multithreading. Here is a first look at the impact of NVIDIA Vera SMT.



AMD PerfOpt To Deliver New Performance Optimization For AMD iGPUs With Linux 7.4

([AMD] 28 September 07:26 AM EDT AMD PerfOpt)

Those using AMD integrated graphics on Linux such as the beefy Ryzen AI Max+ Strix Halo and Gorgon Halo hardware will be able to enjoy even better performance with the upcoming Linux 7.4 kernel.



openSUSE Leap 16.1 RC Released With New Immutable Mode

([SUSE] 28 September 06:20 AM EDT openSUSE Leap 16.1)

The release candidate phase has begun for the upcoming openSUSE Leap 16.1 in-step with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1. Most notable with the openSUSE Leap 16.1 is the introduction of its new immutable mode.



Linux 7.4 To Introduce The Steal Governor For Helping Virtualized Workloads

([Virtualization] 28 September 06:12 AM EDT Steal Governor)

Now queued up for introduction in the Linux 7.4 merge window later in October is the steal governor driver for preferred CPUs and steal-driven vCPU backoff for today's virtualized world.



Shotcut 26.9 Video Editor Brings UI Improvements, Automatic Audio Ducking

([Free Software] 28 September 05:44 AM EDT Shotcut 26.9)

Following the earlier Shotcut 26.9 beta at the beginning of September, the open-source developers behind the open-source non-linear video editor are out with the Shotcut 26.9 stable release.



Linux 7.3-rc5 Released: "Another Week, Another Large RC"

([Linux Kernel] 27 September 05:17 PM EDT Linux 7.3)

In working toward the stable Linux 7.3 kernel release hopefully on 18 October, out today is Linux 7.3-rc5 as the newest weekly test candidate.



Budgie 10.10.3 Released With Favorites In Budgie Menu, Labwc Bridge Improvements

([Desktop] 27 September 01:37 PM EDT Budgie 10.10.3)

Budgie 10.10.3 is out today as the newest point release to this open-source desktop.



Linux Kernel's LZ4 Compression Code Being Resynced For Better Performance & Cleanliness

([Linux Kernel] 27 September 09:16 AM EDT Linux LZ4)

In addition to the Linux kernel's Zstd compression code being improved, the LZ4 compression code within the kernel tree is also seeing a separate set of enhancements.



Intel Delivers A Significant Memory Hotplugging Performance Optimization For Linux

([Intel] 27 September 06:49 AM EDT Faster Memory Hotplugging)

Adding to the features expected to land for Linux 7.4 is a significant performance optimization for the memory hotplugging speed for adding additional RAM. In particular, the memory hotplugging being most applicable for cases like expanding the amount of memory for VMs or in today's CXL world for adding additional system memory.



New Linux Patches For Supporting Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon G14's Second Camera

([Hardware] 27 September 06:33 AM EDT ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14)

For those considering Lenovo's recently launched and beautifully crafted ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 laptop powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake", one of the lingering missing features under Linux will hopefully soon be addressed: its second web camera.



New Patch Series Working Toward DRBD 9 Support In The Linux Kernel

([Linux Storage] 27 September 06:23 AM EDT Distributed Replicated Block Device)

Earlier this year developers at LINBIT began working toward a goal of upstreaming ~15 years worth of their Distributed Replicated Block Device changes into the mainline Linux kernel. That major update has yet to land but sent out this week was a new patch series in preparing the trek toward introducing DRBD 9 support in the mainline kernel.



Improved GPU Reset Coming For Raspberry Pi Boards With Linux 7.4

([Raspberry Pi] 26 September 08:45 PM EDT drm-misc-next)

In addition to this week's DRM-Misc-Next pull request introducing some new HDMI 2.0 helpers for the DRM drivers, the pull request also introduced improved GPU reset support for the Broadcom V3D GPU with the VC4 kernel driver.



"Toolpak" Being Devised By GNOME OS Developers, Akin To Flatpak For Tools

([GNOME] 26 September 12:50 PM EDT Toolpak)

GNOME developer Jordan Petridis published a blog post today to introduce the world to the Toolpak plans for GNOME OS.



MM Change Slated For Linux 7.4 Yields +22904539.81% In One Metric, More Modest Wins In Others

([Linux Kernel] 26 September 11:07 AM EDT Sheaves)

Queued this week into the slab/for-next Git branch ahead of next month's Linux 7.4 merge window is a memory management change for refilling pre-filled sheaves from the barn. In some cases this yields wild improvements to specific synthetic benchmarks.



AI Bug Fixes, Crescent Island Power Brake & Nouveau Fixes For Linux 7.3-rc5 DRM

([Linux Kernel] 26 September 07:13 AM EDT DRM Fixes)

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem fixes for the week are heavier on the side with many fixes to these kernel graphics/display drivers ahead of Sunday's Linux 7.3-rc5 release.



Wisp Makes It Easier To Manage Btrfs Snapshots From The GNOME Desktop

([GNOME] 26 September 06:45 AM EDT Wisp)

Wisp is a new GNOME Shell extension making it easier to graphically manage Btrfs file-system snapshots.



AMDXDNA Linux Driver Being Enhanced For Current NPU3 Hardware

([AMD] 26 September 06:33 AM EDT AMDXDNA NPU3 Enhancements)

The AMDXDNA open-source Linux kernel accelerator driver is seeing a fair amount of work for better supporting current-generation NPU3 neural processing units. The AMD NPU3 is what's found in current AMD Ryzen AI 300 / Ryzen AI 300 PRO series SoCs.



KDE Plasma 6.8 Continues With Last Minute Tweaks & Fixes

([KDE] 26 September 05:56 AM EDT Plasma 6.8)

Even with this week's KDE Akademy conference and releasing KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta 2, KDE developers still found time to land last minute changes for Plasma 6.8 plus ongoing early work toward Plasma 6.9.



More

Unobfuscated Perl (#1)

A rogue group of Perl hackers has presented a plan to add a "use
really_goddamn_strict" pragma that would enforce readability and
UNobfuscation. With this pragma in force, the Perl compiler might say:

* Warning: Program contains zero comments. You've probably never seen or
used one before; they begin with a # symbol. Please start using them or
else a representative from the nearest Perl Mongers group will come to
your house and beat you over the head with a cluestick.

* Warning: Program uses a cute trick at line 125 that might make sense in
C. But this isn't C!

* Warning: Code at line 412 indicates that programmer is an idiot. Please
correct error between chair and monitor.

* Warning: While There's More Than One Way To Do It, your method at line
523 is particularly stupid. Please try again.