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 Preps Linux For eUSB2V2 To Enhance USB 2.0 For Higher Resolution Laptop Webcams

([Hardware] 3 March 06:57 AM EST eUSB2V2)

Last September the USB Implementers Forum quietly published an update to the USB 2.0 specification... The Embedded USB2 Version 2.0 "eUSB2V2" supplement to provide for better performance with significantly higher data rates to USB 2.0 while maintaining the low-voltage electrical interface.



Linux Gaining SMP Support For The OpenPOWER Microwatt

([Linux Kernel] 3 March 06:23 AM EST Multiple Cores)

Open-sourced back in 2019 was the OpenPOWER Microwatt as an open-source, soft processor core of Power ISA 3.0 and intended for use on FPGA boards and then there was seemingly short-lived work to fabricate a Microwatt chip and Microwatt also found its way for use within a BMC implementation. Linux 5.14 added support for this soft CPU core while the upcoming Linux 6.15 cycle is set to introduce SMP support for Microwatt.



Optimized AMD SEV Cache Flushing Patches Posted For Linux

([AMD] 3 March 06:06 AM EST Secure Encrypted Virtualization)

The newest upstream-focused work around AMD SEV for Secure Encrypted Virtualization with EPYC server processors is a set of patches to better optimize cache flushing.



Linux 6.14-rc5 Released: "Nothing Strange Stands Out"

([Linux Kernel] 2 March 03:00 PM EST Linux 6.14-rc5)

Linus Torvalds just released the Linux 6.14-rc5 kernel as the Linux 6.14 stable kernel approaches toward release later in March.



NVIDIA Is Finding Great Success With Vulkan Machine Learning - Competitive With CUDA

([NVIDIA] 2 March 10:00 AM EST NVIDIA Vulkan AI)

It's not only AMD that is working on Vulkan/SPIR-V support for machine learning / AI software but NVIDIA has been working on improvements too for enhancing Vulkan-powered machine learning software. The outlook for using Vulkan within machine learning software is quite positive and even able to offer similar performance to NVIDIA's prized CUDA.



TurnkeyML 6.0 Released With OpenAI-Compatible Server, Other Changes

([Programming] 2 March 06:32 AM EST TurnkeyML 6.0)

Back in 2023 ONNX and AMD announced TurnkeyML as an "AI insights toolchain". There hasn't been too much news about TurnkeyML since then and they now describe the project itself as a "no-code AI toolchain" while this week brought the release of the big TurnkeyML 6.0 software.



ARM Linux Kernel May Shift To Generic Entry Code: Less Assembly But Lower Performance

([Arm] 2 March 06:16 AM EST ARM Linux Kernel Entry)

A pull request was sent out on Friday that could potentially land for the upcoming Linux 6.15 kernel to transition ARM's kernel entry code from some architecture-specific Assembly over to using the generic entry code path. It means more unification and transitioning some Assembly code over to C, but it also comes with some hits to performance.



SDL 3.2.6 Released With HiDPI Icons & Color Management On Wayland

([Linux Gaming] 2 March 06:02 AM EST SDL 3.2.6)

Following the official SDL 3 release back in January, SDL 3.2.6 was released this weekend as the newest iteration of this widely-used software/hardware abstraction layer that is commonly leveraged by cross-platform games.



Steam Survey For February 2025 Shows A Big Drop To Linux Use

([Linux Gaming] 2 March 06:25 AM EST Steam Survey)

Back during January Steam on Linux dropped by 0.23% to a 2.06% marketshare while overnight the numbers were published for February 2025...



Linux's New Way Of Informing User-Space Over Hung GPUs May Become More Useful

([Linux Kernel] 1 March 03:09 PM EST Extending Wedged Events)

Last month I wrote about new code slated to be added for Linux 6.15 that would provide a cross-driver/standardized means of reporting to user-space over hung GPUs. For the likes of the AMD and Intel graphics drivers initially, user-space will be notified via this new wedged event when a GPU is hung in case user-space wants to take additional actions to try to recover the GPU or at least properly note the troubled state of the GPU. There are now proposed patches under review for further extending this functionality.



AMD Readies More Graphics Driver Improvements For Linux 6.15

([Radeon] 1 March 08:45 AM EST AMDGPU Linux 6.15)

Last week AMD sent out a big batch of new graphics driver code for Linux 6.15 including new GPU support, OEM i2c support for RGB lighting and other features, and other updates. Another round of AMDGPU/AMDKFD feature code targeting the upcoming Linux 6.15 merge window was sent out on Friday.



NVIDIA Blackwell, Continued AMD Zen 5 Benchmarking & Rust Drama Dominated February

([Phoronix] 1 March 06:38 AM EST February Highlights)

While a shorter month, there were still 263 original articles published on Phoronix during February. A lot of exciting hardware in the lab to notable open-source milestones and interesting kernel developments made for an interesting month besides the usual battle over ad-blockers and pressure on the web publishing industry.



Intel Core 2 CPUs Have Been Affected By An Annoying Linux Kernel Bug For 5+ Years

([Intel] 1 March 06:41 AM EST Intel Core 2)

A fix was merged to the Linux 6.14 kernel on Friday -- and also for back-porting to existing Linux stable kernels over the coming days -- for fixing an annoying problem with Intel Core 2 processors. The problem, which was introduced to the Linux kernel back in 2019, could lead to system stalls and boot delays for those still using Intel Core 2 CPUs with modern distributions.



GNOME's Mutter Now Supports The Wayland Cursor Shape Protocol

([GNOME] 1 March 06:26 AM EST GNOME Improvements)

Racing toward the GNOME 48 finish line, developers have remained busy squeezing some remaining bits into place for this big open-source desktop release.



KDE Developers Begin More Feature Work On Plasma 6.4

([KDE] 1 March 06:12 AM EST KDE Plasma 6.4)

With the Plasma 6.3 desktop settling down and the early bugs being addressed, KDE developers have begun spending more time on feature work toward the Plasma 6.4 release.



DeepSeek Develops Linux File-System For Better AI Training & Inference Performance

([Linux Storage] 28 February 08:36 PM EST DeepSeek 3FS)

Chinese AI company DeepSeek made public this week 3FS, a Linux FUSE-based file-system intended for allowing better AI training and inference performance.



NVIDIA Vulkan Beta Driver Updated For Blackwell & New Extensions

([NVIDIA] 28 February 05:47 PM EST NVIDIA Vulkan Beta)

NVIDIA engineers closed out February by releasing the NVIDIA 570.123.01 Vulkan beta driver for Linux and on the Windows side was the NVIDIA 572.63 driver release.



AMD Prepares Linux Driver Support For Image Signal Processor With New Laptops

([AMD] 28 February 12:40 PM EST AMD ISP Gen 4)

Patches were posted today for the Linux kernel implementing new drivers for web camera image signal processing (ISP) for supporting new, unspecified AMD Ryzen laptops.



FreeDesktop.org Devises New Hosting Plan For GitLab Infrastructure

([X.Org] 28 February 11:58 AM EST FreeDesktop.org Hosting)

One month ago FreeDesktop.org/X.Org experienced a new cloud crisis with Equinix Metal shutting down and losing access to all the FreeDesktop.org cloud/hosting resources at the end of April. FreeDesktop.org GitLab powers not only the X.Org projects but also Mesa, Wayland, and countless other Linux desktop open-source projects. Fortunately, it looks like they will have a new solution in time.



NetworkManager 1.52 Brings IPVLAN Interface Support, Ethtool FEC Mode

([Linux Networking] 28 February 09:56 AM EST NetworkManager 1.52)

NetworkManager 1.52 is out today as the newest version of this widely-used system network service and network configuration tool suite for Linux systems.



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I have that old biological urge,
I have that old irresistible surge,
I'm hungry.