GNU News Archives


1,069 GNU open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

GNU Linux-libre 6.8-gnu Dealing With Blobs From New Intel Drivers
GNU Linux-libre 6.8-gnu Dealing With Blobs From New Intel Drivers

GNU Linux-libre 6.8-gnu is out as the newest downstream kernel variety endorsed by the Free Software Foundation that takes the upstream Linux kernel but does away with proprietary module support and stripping out drivers/functionality contingent upon binary-only microcode/firmware and other elements not deemed up to their free software standards.

11 March 2024 - GNU Linux-libre 6.8-gnu - 14 Comments
GNU Hurd Has Been Making Progress On Its x86_64 Support
GNU Hurd Has Been Making Progress On Its x86_64 Support

While GNU Hurd predates the Linux kernel, its hardware support has been woefully behind with very limited and dated hardware support compared to modern PC/server hardware. Not only that, its been largely x86 limited but during Q4'2023 the developers involved have made progress on x86_64 support and begun tackling AArch64 porting.

10 January 2024 - GNU Hurd - 49 Comments
GCC 14 Compiler Lands Initial Support For Targeting AMD RDNA3 "GFX11" GPUs
GCC 14 Compiler Lands Initial Support For Targeting AMD RDNA3 "GFX11" GPUs

AMD makes heavy use of the LLVM compiler infrastructure by their graphics drivers and compute stack while the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) has to a lesser extent supported AMD graphics targets too in the context of GPU compute / OpenMP device offloading. That AMD Radeon/Instinct support for GCC has been carried out over the years by Mentor Graphics and other stakeholders. The latest on the AMD GPU expedition for GCC is that the upcoming GCC 14 compiler will finally be supporting AMD RDNA3 (GFX11) graphics hardware.

9 January 2024 - GCC + AMD GFX11 Graphics Target - 4 Comments
Glibc Updated For Recent Linux CET Shadow Stack Support
Glibc Updated For Recent Linux CET Shadow Stack Support

With Linux 6.6, the mainline kernel finally landed support for Shadow Stack on Intel/AMD CPUs that was originally rolled out as part of Intel's Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) for better fending off ROP attacks. The GNU C Library "glibc" was recently updated with some changes around the CET / Shadow Stack support.

3 January 2024 - Control-flow Enforcement Tech SS - Add A Comment
GNU Boot Drops Some Motherboards & CPU Code After Discovering Non-Free Bits
GNU Boot Drops Some Motherboards & CPU Code After Discovering Non-Free Bits

The GNU Boot project has been in the works as a Coreboot/Libreboot fork focused on "freedom respecting boot firmware" that is free from closed-source and proprietary components. But in working towards its inaugural v0.1 release, they discovered that they had inadvertently been shipping some non-free software around AMD CPU microcode updates and some motherboard ports with non-open-source code.

31 December 2023 - Whoops, Not So Open-Source - 62 Comments
GRUB 2.12 Bootloader Brings SDL2 Support, Boot Loader Interface
GRUB 2.12 Bootloader Brings SDL2 Support, Boot Loader Interface

GRUB 2.06 was released back in June of 2021 and today it's finally been succeeded by... GRUB 2.12. This latest GRUB stable release has been a long time coming but it's finally out before the new year and it's packing many features for this widely-used open-source bootloader.

20 December 2023 - GRUB 2.12 - 43 Comments
GCC Patches Posted For Implementing Incremental LTO
GCC Patches Posted For Implementing Incremental LTO

Michal Jires of SUSE posted a new set of patches on Friday for implementing Incremental LTO support for the GNU Compiler Collection. The goal here with Incremental LTO is for reducing compile times while doing quick edit-compile cycles while employing Link-Time Optimizations.

18 November 2023 - GCC Incremental LTO - 3 Comments
GCC COBOL Compiler Support Continues To Be Worked On
GCC COBOL Compiler Support Continues To Be Worked On

While not as popular as Rust or other languages these days, for COBOL enthusiasts and those continuing to maintain codebases in this 50's programming language, the out-of-tree GCC COBOL compiler support continues to be worked on in late 2023.

15 November 2023 - COBOL - 1 Comment
GCC 14 Now Honors The -std=c23 & -std=gnu23 Compiler Options For C23
GCC 14 Now Honors The -std=c23 & -std=gnu23 Compiler Options For C23

While the next revision of the C standard won't see its formal publishing until the 2024 calendar year, the ISO C standards committee already decided on keeping "C23" as the informal name for this next major C update. As such, with today's GCC 14 Git the -std=c23 compiler option for targeting C23 is now honored along with -std=gnu23 for the GNU dialect of C23.

6 November 2023 - GCC 14 + C23 - 5 Comments
GCC Security Policy Merged To GCC Git
GCC Security Policy Merged To GCC Git

Following discussions on the GCC mailing list in recent weeks, a GCC security policy was added for the GNU Compiler Collection codebase to outline the compiler project's security process.

5 October 2023 - GCC Security Policy - Add A Comment
Glibc Dynamic Loader Hit By A Nasty Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
Glibc Dynamic Loader Hit By A Nasty Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

A nasty vulnerability has been made public today concerning Glibc's dynamic loader that can lead to full root privileges being obtained by local users. This affects Linux distributions of the past two years with the likes of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, 23.04, Fedora 38, and others vulnerable to this local privilege escalation issue.

3 October 2023 - Nasty Bug - 26 Comments
Glibc Lands HWCAPs Support For LoongArch
Glibc Lands HWCAPs Support For LoongArch

When it comes to Glibc HWCAPs for allowing the C library to load optimized libraries based upon the CPU features at run-time, it's mostly been focused on the x86_64 world for targeting higher x86-64 levels or being able to load optimized libraries for systems with AVX support. Loongson though has now contributed initial LoongArch HWCAPs support.

20 September 2023 - glibc HWCAPs - 6 Comments
GCC Preparing To Introduce "-fhardened" Security Hardening Option
GCC Preparing To Introduce "-fhardened" Security Hardening Option

Following discussions among compiler developers and other stakeholders, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is preparing to add a "-fhardened" compiler option that will enable various hardening features aimed at increasing the security/robustness of the generated binaries.

15 September 2023 - -fhardened - 22 Comments
GNU Assembler Starts Getting Ready For Intel AVX10.1
GNU Assembler Starts Getting Ready For Intel AVX10.1

Back in July Intel announced AVX10 as the future of AVX-512 and how they ultimately plan to support more Advanced Vector Extensions capabilities on both future P and E cores. Since then they've begun making preparations to the open-source compiler toolchains around enabling AVX10.

14 September 2023 - GNU Binutils + Intel AVX10.1 - 7 Comments
Haiku OS Support Upstreamed Into GCC Compiler
Haiku OS Support Upstreamed Into GCC Compiler

Developers of the BeOS-inspired Haiku operating system have long been carrying patches for supporting the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) on their platform while this week the code was upstreamed for GCC 14.

11 August 2023 - GCC 14 With Native Haiku Support - 14 Comments
GnuCOBOL 3.2 Released After 2+ Years In Development
GnuCOBOL 3.2 Released After 2+ Years In Development

For those fond of the COBOL programming language and continuing to make use of it in new development efforts, GnuCOBOL 3.2 was released on Friday as the latest feature update for this 21+ year old free software effort around being an open-source COBOL implementation.

29 July 2023 - GnuCOBOL 3.2 - 11 Comments
GCC 13.2 Released With 58+ Bugs Fixed
GCC 13.2 Released With 58+ Bugs Fixed

Released back in April was GCC 13.1 as the first stable release in the GCC 13 series that brought Modula-2 language support, more C++23/C23 features, and other new CPU targets supported from Arm to Intel. Debuting today is GCC 13.2 as the first point release in the series to ship dozens of bug fixes.

27 July 2023 - GCC 13.2 - 8 Comments
GNU Boot 20230717 Released For Freeing The Firmware On Some Old Hardware
GNU Boot 20230717 Released For Freeing The Firmware On Some Old Hardware

GNU Boot 20230717 has been released as the fork of Libreboot that in turn is a downstream of Coreboot focused on providing system firmware support only where they are fully free software. With GNU Boot the game is upped further by removing select motherboard ports and documentation where they do not comply with the GNU System Distribution Guidelines.

17 July 2023 - GNU Boot 20230717 - 22 Comments
GCC 10.5 Compiler Released To Close-Out The Series
GCC 10.5 Compiler Released To Close-Out The Series

For those on the three-year-old GCC 10 compiler series, it's really time to move to a newer GNU Compiler Collection release for enjoying the latest language support, new hardware features, various optimizations, enhanced diagnostics, and more. But for those still bound to GCC 10 for whatever reason, GCC 10.5 was released today as one final update in the branch.

7 July 2023 - GCC 10.5 - 4 Comments
GNU Linux-libre 6.4 Released For Stripping Out Possible Binary Blob Dependencies
GNU Linux-libre 6.4 Released For Stripping Out Possible Binary Blob Dependencies

Following yesterday's release of Linux 6.4, the FSFLA team has released GNU Linux-libre 6.4-gnu as the newest version of this downstream kernel that aims for "100% freedom" with removing any kernel remnants that depend upon non-free-software microcode/firmware or other binary blobs as well as removing the ability to load proprietary kernel modules.

26 June 2023 - GNU Linux-libre 6.4 - 32 Comments
GCC 14 Adds Initial "-std=c++26" Plumbing
GCC 14 Adds Initial "-std=c++26" Plumbing

Similar to LLVM Clang 17 adding -std=c++26 support as the open-source compiler begins work on the next major revision of the C++ programming language, the GCC 14 compiler code has now also added the -std=c++26 compiler option.

24 June 2023 - -std=gnu++26 Too - 15 Comments

1069 GNU news articles published on Phoronix.