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 Compute Runtime 24.22.29735.20 Brings Latest OpenCL & Level Zero Support On Linux

([Intel] 26 June 07:05 PM EDT Intel CR 24.22.29735.20)

Intel today issued the Compute Runtime 24.22.29735.20 release as their open-source driver providing OpenCL and oneAPI Level Zero capabilities on Windows and Linux systems. This update was joined by an updated Intel Graphics Compiler, IGC 1.0.16900.23.



Arch Linux Installer "Archinstall" 2.8.1 Adds Experimental LVM Support

([Arch Linux] 26 June 11:47 AM EDT Archinstall 2.8.1)

Archinstall 2.8.1 is now available for the newest version of this easy-to-use, command-line driven installer for the Arch Linux operating system.



COSMIC Alpha Desktop Release Still Planned For Late July

([Desktop] 26 June 11:16 AM EDT COSMIC Alpha)

System76 developers are still on track for releasing the alpha version of their Rust-written COSMIC desktop in late July.



Canonical Offers Up 12 Year "Everything LTS" For Docker Images

([Ubuntu] 26 June 10:14 AM EDT Everything LTS)

Ubuntu maker Canonical announced "Everything LTS" as a new initiative where for Ubuntu Pro customers they will offer up a twelve year LTS period for any open-source Docker image.



Rust-Written OpenCL Driver Now Works On Raspberry Pi GPUs

([Mesa] 26 June 08:37 AM EDT Rusticl + V3D)

Mesa's Rusticl driver as a Rust-based OpenCL driver for GPUs backed by Gallium3D support now works with the Broadcom V3D driver. This V3D support is notable as it's most commonly associated with the Raspberry Pi single board computers.



AMDVLK 2024.Q2.3 Release Brings Few Changes

([Radeon] 26 June 08:12 AM EDT AMDVLK 2024.Q2.3)

AMD has published AMDVLK 2024.Q2.3 as the newest version of their open-source Radeon Vulkan driver for Linux systems.



Intel Vulkan Driver Enables Cooperative Matrix Support For Xe2 GPUs

([Intel] 26 June 06:25 AM EDT VK_KHR_cooperative_matrix)

Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers continue to be quite busy in preparing for the Xe2 next-generation graphics to be found with forthcoming Lunar Lake processors and the Battlemage discrete graphics cards.



openSUSE Leap Micro 6.0 Now Available For Container & VM Needs

([SUSE] 26 June 06:01 AM EDT openSUSE Leap Micro 6.0)

OpenSUSE has released Leap Micro 6.0 as stable for this community rebranded build of SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 6.0. Leap Micro continues to be focused on delivering a very reliable and robust experience for containers and virtual machines.



GCC 15 Adds NVIDIA Grace CPU Support With "-mcpu=grace" Option

([NVIDIA] 26 June 06:12 AM EDT NVIDIA Grace CPU Support)

NVIDIA has upstreamed a patch to the GCC 15 compiler for adding the "-mcpu=grace" option to make it easier to target NVIDIA Grace AArch64 CPU cores from this open-source compiler.



Fedora 41 Will Make OpenSSL Distrust SHA1 Signatures By Default

([Fedora] 26 June 05:51 AM EDT Distrusting SHA1)

A change proposal has been approved for Fedora 41 to make OpenSSL distrust SHA1 signatures by default.



NUMA Emulation Yields "Significant Performance Uplift" To Raspberry Pi 5

([Arm] 25 June 12:50 PM EDT ARM64 NUMA Emulation)

Engineers at consulting firm Igalia are exploring NUMA emulation for ARM64 (AArch64) due to the potential of "significant" performance uplift as observed on the popular Raspberry Pi 5 single board computer.



KDE Plasma 6.1 Performing Much Better On Older Intel Integrated Graphics

([KDE] 25 June 11:01 AM EDT KDE Plasma 6.1)

With the recently released KDE Plasma 6.1 desktop environment, those still relying on old Intel integrated graphics should have a much more pleasant experience thanks to improvements made to the KWin compositor. For very old Intel integrated graphics, it can effectively be a night and day difference upgrading to the new Plasma 6.1 desktop.



Intel's Linux Software Optimizations Still Pay Off For Xeon 6700E "Sierra Forest" E-Core CPUs

([Operating Systems] 25 June 09:48 AM EDT 15 Comments)

When testing Intel's aggressive software Linux optimizations shipped by way of their in-house Clear Linux distribution, I am most often testing it on their high core count Xeon processors with AVX-512... Over the years in dozens of Phoronix articles there have been countless metrics showing off the out-of-the-box performance benefits from leveraging software built for higher x86_64 micro-architecture feature levels, employing compiler-based function multi-versioning, and the other extensive performance tuning carried out by Intel software engineers. But now with the Intel Xeon 6700E "Sierra Forest" series now being available for these all-E-core server processors, I was curious about quantifying the Clear Linux benefits over the likes of Ubuntu Linux. Here are those benchmarks for those curious about the difference.



Raspberry Pi Connect Adds Remote Shell Access, Support For Older Raspberry Pi SBCs

([Raspberry Pi] 25 June 09:31 AM EDT Raspberry Pi Connect)

Back in May the Raspberry Pi crew announced Raspberry Pi Access as an easy means of remote GUI access to Raspberry Pi single board computers all from a web browser. Today they've announced the latest improvements to Raspberry Pi Connect.



More AMD P-State Driver Improvements Queued For Linux 6.11

([AMD] 25 June 06:49 AM EDT AMD P-State Driver Enhancements)

Earlier this month AMD Fast CPPC support was queued into the Linux power management subsystem's "-next" codebase ahead of the Linux 6.11 cycle. Additional AMD P-State driver enhancements are now deemed ready and submitted for staging ahead of next month's Linux 6.11 cycle kicking off.



Intel Vulkan Driver Sees Fixes To Improve OpenGL-On-Vulkan Zink Compatibility

([Intel] 25 June 06:33 AM EDT Intel ANV + Zink)

The open-source Intel ANV Vulkan driver has recently been seeing improvements around better handling the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver.



Fedora 41 Installer Proceeding To Transition From X11 To Wayland App

([Fedora] 25 June 06:08 AM EDT Anaconda Installer To Wayland)

With Fedora's new web-based installer UI being delayed to 2025 with Fedora 42, part of Red Hat's justification for that setback was needing to invest resources first in Fedora 41 by transitioning the OS installer to being a native Wayland application. The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has now signed off on that work as expected to make the Anaconda OS installer a native Wayland application.



OpenShot 3.2 Released With Better Performance For This Open-Source Video Editor

([Free Software] 25 June 05:38 AM EDT OpenShot 3.2)

OpenShot 3.2 has been released as the latest feature update to this open-source, non-linear video editor that is popular on Linux systems.



RadeonSI Enables Compute PBO Blits: "Massively Improves Perf In A Number Of Cases"

([Radeon] 24 June 01:59 PM EDT RadeonSI Compute PBO Blits)

Related to the work by Mike Blumenkrantz for significantly improving the Mesa glReadPixels performance by more than 100%, the open-source driver developer at Valve has now enabled compute PBO blits within mainline Mesa for the AMD Radeon "RadeonSI" Gallium3D driver.



Llamafile 0.8.7 Brings Fixes, Better ARM Performance & Preps For New Server

([Mozilla] 24 June 11:11 AM EDT Llamafile 0.8.7)

Llamafile has been one of the better new initiatives out of Mozilla in recent years. Llamafile makes it easy to conveniently distribute and run large language models as a single file while supporting both CPU and GPU execution and all-around making AI LLMs much more approachable for end-users. Out today is Llamafile 0.8.7 with more performance optimizations and new features.



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If Bill Gates is the Devil then Linus Torvalds must be the Messiah.