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)

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Retires

([Intel] 2 December 08:47 AM EST Pat Gelsinger Retires)

While Intel has been under much financial difficulties and as they pursue their build out of new fabs to better compete with TSMC, to much surprise Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired effective today.



Qt 6.8.1 Toolkit Released With 550+ Bug Fixes

([Qt] 2 December 08:27 AM EST Qt 6.8.1)

Building off the early October release of Qt 6.8 LTS, Qt 6.8.1 is out today with more than 550 fixes collected over the past two months.



Vulkan Video Now Enabled By Default For Radeon VCN2/VCN3 Hardware On Linux

([Mesa] 2 December 07:00 AM EST Vulkan Video default)

An exciting merge today for the Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver with next quarter's Mesa 25.0 is enabling Vulkan Video API support by default for AMD graphics having VCN 2.x and VCN 3.x hardware.



Imagination Lands Big PowerVR Compiler Update In Mesa 25.0

([Mesa] 2 December 06:23 AM EST Imagination PVR)

Merged over the US holiday weekend was a big update to the Imagination PowerVR Vulkan driver code for Mesa 25.0... 71 patches in fact making up this merge request.



Llamafile 0.8.17 Brings New Web UI For This Easy-To-Distribute AI LLM Framework

([Free Software] 2 December 06:34 AM EST Llamafile 0.8.17)

Llamafile 0.8.17 debuted this weekend as the newest version of this Mozilla research project for making it easy to distribute and run AI large language models (LLMs) within a single file. As implied by its name, Llamafile leverages Llama.cpp along with other open-source software into one consistent framework for helping to make single-file LLM executables a reality.



XWayland Lands Support For xdg-system-bell

([Wayland] 2 December 06:15 AM EST XWayland + xdg-system-bell)

Olivier Fourdan has merged support for using the xdg-system-bell protocol by XWayland for dealing with "system bell" functionality for Wayland compositors supporting this newer protocol for ringing the system bell or otherwise implementing a visual indicator that a system bell type event may have been triggered.



Steam Survey Results For November 2024: Linux Gaming Marketshare Slightly Higher

([Valve] 2 December 05:42 AM EST Steam Survey)

During October the Steam Linux marketshare crawled back up to 2.0% while overnight Valve published the Steam Survey results for November 2024.



Lutris 0.5.18 Linux Game Manager Brings Many Improvements

([Linux Gaming] 1 December 08:18 PM EST Lutris 0.5.18)

Lutris 0.5.18 is out today as the newest version of this open-source game manager for Linux systems to help with installing and playing a variety of games whether they be native Linux titles, emulated Windows games with the likes of Wine / Proton, or console emulated games and more. Lutris also continues integrating with the likes of Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, and other online game services for providing a nice Linux gaming experience.



Linux 6.13-rc1 Released With Many New Features

([Linux Kernel] 1 December 05:42 PM EST Linux 6.13)

As expected, this evening Linus Torvalds released Linux 6.13-rc1 to cap-off the two-week Linux 6.13 merge window. With Linux 6.13 comes many new features.



Xfce 4.20 Pre2 Released For Testing

([Desktop] 1 December 11:34 AM EST Xfce 4.20)

Following the Xfce 4.20 Pre1 release from one month ago, Xfce 4.20 Pre2 is ready for testing ahead of the planned desktop release in two weeks.



Apple M4, More AMD Zen 5 Benchmarks & Linux Kernel Drama From November

([Phoronix] 1 December 06:45 AM EST November 2024 Highlights)

November was filled with interesting Linux benchmarks ranging from the Apple M4 testing kicking off to ongoing AMD Zen 5 benchmarks both for desktops and servers, a lot of exciting upstream kernel activity (and some drama...), and more. Even with the end of year holidays around, there remains new and original content on Phoronix each and every day. During November there were 250 original news articles on Phoronix along with another 14 Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured-length benchmark articles.



Turbostat Utility Lands New Features With Linux 6.13

([Intel] 1 December 06:58 AM EST turbostat)

The turbostat utility that lives within the Linux kernel source tree for reporting CPU frequency/idle statistics and other metrics is gaining some new capabilities as part of the Linux 6.13 cycle.



NVIDIA's New Linux Patches For GPU Direct RDMA For Device-Private Pages

([Linux Kernel] 1 December 06:26 AM EST P2P DMA For GPU-Centric Apps)

NVIDIA engineer Yonatan Maman posted a set of "request for comments" patches this Sunday to implement GPU Direct RDMA "P2P DMA" for device private pages. This is the latest in the effort by multiple vendors to allow more efficient data sharing between GPUs/accelerators and other devices like network adapters.



Linux Fixes Issue Where Applying AMD Zen1/Zen2 Microcode Updates Could Slow Boot Times

([AMD] 1 December 06:13 AM EST Microcode Patch Issue)

Submitted today for the Linux kernel ahead of the Linux 6.13-rc1 release as part of the "x86/urgent" material is a fix for aging Zen 1 and Zen 2 processors where for the past year and a half they could potentially find very slow boot times.



Clang AutoFDO + Propeller Optimization Support Merged For Linux 6.13

([Linux Kernel] 30 November 09:00 PM EST AutoFDO + Propeller)

Last night when writing about the Clang AutoFDO and Propeller optimization patches sent in for Linux 6.13 I had wondered whether Linus Torvalds would go through with the pull request given some of his past commentary around aggressive compiler optimizations... But to much delight, this evening Linus Torvalds has merged the Kbuild pull request that introduces Clang-based AutoFDO and Propeller compiler optimization support for allowing greater kernel performance out of tailored (profiled) workloads.



Wayland Color Management Protocol Might Finally Be Close To Merging

([Wayland] 30 November 10:10 AM EST Wayland Color Management)

In what could be a wonderful holiday for the Linux desktop, it looks like the Wayland color management protocol might finally be close to merging after four years in discussion.



Resources System Monitoring App For GNOME Now Displays NPU Usage

([GNOME] 30 November 07:00 AM EST Resources v1.7)

As an alternative to the GNOME System Monitor application for system monitoring, Resources has been in development as a currently unofficial, GNOME-aligned resource/hardware monitoring application written in the Rust programming language. Resources v1.7 was released on Friday and now has the ability to monitor NPU usage and other enhancements.



Linux 6.13 Hits A "Tipping Point" With More Rust Drivers Expected Soon

([Linux Kernel] 30 November 06:00 AM EST Linux 6.13 char/misc)

In addition to the USB updates and big staging flush merged yesterday for the Linux 6.13 kernel merge window, the "char/misc" pull was also honored for that catch-all of various kernel changes. With the char/misc pull there are some notable additions for those wanting to write kernel drivers within the Rust programming language.



Rust Hypervisor Firmware v0.5 Supports For More CPUs & Improves EFI Support

([Virtualization] 30 November 05:40 AM EST Rust Hypervisor Firmware)

The Rust Hypervisor Firmware is a project out of the Cloud Hypervisor umbrella for developing open-source, Rust-based firmware that can be launched from any environment able to load ELF binaries and run them via the PVH booting standard. Rust Hypervisor Firmware v0.5 is out this weekend with the newest capabilities.



KDE Ends November With More KWin Fixes & Other Polishing Ahead Of Plasma 6.3

([KDE] 30 November 05:22 AM EST Plasma Polishing)

KDE developers have wrapped up a busy November with many fixes and other refinements landing this last week of the month.



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> Wouldn't it have made more sense to make the 'len' parameter an unsigned int?

Oh yes.

And wouldn't it be nicer if the sky was pink, and God came personally down
to earth and stopped all wrans and made you king?

- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel?