Rust Maybe Coming To The Linux Kernel, Other Open-Source Milestones For July
As for what has been interesting Linux/FLOSS users during the summer amid all the happenings in the world, the most popular news articles for last month included:
Linus Torvalds: "I Hope AVX512 Dies A Painful Death"
Linux creator Linus Torvalds had some choice words today on Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (AVX-512) found on select Intel processors.
Microsoft Engineer Proposes "TRAMPFD" For Improving Linux Security
A Microsoft engineer is proposing the Trampoline File Descriptor "TRAMPFD" as a new kernel API for securely dealing with trampoline code on systems. There are concerns already over the potential performance implications but there does seem to be some interest in this approach.
Linus Torvalds' Initial Comment On Rust Code Prospects Within The Linux Kernel
Kernel developers appear to be eager to debate the merits of potentially allowing Rust code within the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds himself has made some initial remarks on the topic ahead of the Linux Plumbers 2020 conference where the matter will be discussed at length.
I've Been Running The AMD Ryzen 7 4700U + Ubuntu 20.04 As My Main System
For about one and a half months now I have been using the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U as my main laptop paired with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It's been working out very well for not even being the top-of-the-line AMD Renoir SKU. Here is some additional commentary for those thinking about one of the new AMD laptops with Linux use.
Intel Gen12/Xe Graphics Have AV1 Accelerated Decode - Linux Support Lands
On top of Intel Gen12/Xe Graphics bringing other media engine improvements and much better 3D graphics support, another exciting element of the next-generation Intel graphics is now confirmed: GPU-accelerated AV1 video decoding!
Linux Developers May Discuss Allowing Rust Code Within The Kernel
A Google engineer is looking to discuss at this year's Linux Plumbers Conference the possibility of allowing in-tree Rust language support.
Firefox 80 To Support VA-API Acceleration On X11
While recent Firefox releases have seen VA-API video acceleration working when running natively under Wayland, the Firefox 80 release later this summer will bring VA-API support by default to those running on a conventional X.Org Server.
Fedora Approves Of Making Nano The Default Terminal Text Editor, Other Features Accepted
At this week's Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) meeting, more features were approved for the Fedora 33 release due out this fall.
Google Finally Begins Their Open-Source Dance Around Linux User-Space Threading
Way back in 2013 there was a presentation at the Linux Plumbers Conference around Google's work on user-level threads and how they were working on new kernel functionality for using regular threads in a cooperative fashion and building various features off that. Fast forward to today, that functionality has been in use internally at Google for a range of services for latency-sensitive services and greater control over user-space scheduling while now finally in 2020 they are working towards open-sourcing that work.
Zrythm Approaching Beta As An Easy-To-Use, Open-Source Digital Audio Workstation
When it comes to open-source audio software, the Ardour digital audio workstation and Audacity audio editor are the two flagship offerings. But Zrythm continues advancing as another promising open-source digital audio workstation project. Zrythm is currently in a late alpha stage with its newest release this weekend but a beta appears to be on the horizon.
Microsoft Releases Its Own Open-Source Process Monitor For Linux
Microsoft's newest open-source Linux software is ProcMon for Linux, a rewritten and re-imagined version of its Processor Monitor found on Windows within their Sysinternals suite.
H.266/VVC Standard Finalized With ~50% Lower Size Compared To H.265
The Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard is now firmed up as H.266 as the successor to H.265/HEVC.
Linux 5.8 Formally Adds The Inclusive Terminology Guidelines
Merged overnight into the Linux kernel source tree are the new guidelines concerning the use of "inclusive terminology" for future code.
Linux Might Pursue x86_64 Micro-Architecture Feature Levels
Stemming from the recent GNU glibc work on better handling modern CPU optimizations with newer instruction set extensions across Intel and AMD product families, the concept of x86-64 micro-architecture feature levels is being talked about by open-source/Linux developers.
There's An Effort By A System76 Engineer To Bring Coreboot To Newer AMD Platforms
With System76 working towards offering more AMD Linux laptop options as well as continuing to expand their line-up of AMD desktop offerings, it appears their next hurdle is on bringing Coreboot to these current-generation AMD platforms.
GNOME OS Is Taking Shape But Its To Serve For Testing The Desktop
The virtual GNOME conference kicked off today, GUADEC 2020, and one of the talks was focused on running "GNOME OS" on real hardware.
Linux Kernel Preparing New Guidelines For Using Inclusive Terminology
Prominent upstream Linux kernel developers are working on adding "inclusive terminology" guidelines to the Linux kernel coding style requirements.
High-End Lightworks Video Editor Finally Says Why They Didn't Go Open-Source Yet
Way back in 2010 it was announced that Lightworks would be going open-source as this high-end, non-linear and cross-platform video editor solution. This video editing system has been used by many films over the years from The Wolf of Wall Street to Bruce Almighty to Moulin Rouge to Pulp Fiction as well as many other movies and television shows while also being approachable enough that it's used by less advanced video editing enthusiasts. Lightworks going open-source would be a big win, but ten years after their failed plans were announced they finally have shed some light on why such move away from being a proprietary application never materialized.
Important Patches Land To Improve GNOME's Multi-Monitor Experience With High Refresh Rates
If you have say a 144Hz gaming monitor as well as a conventional 60Hz secondary display or any other multi-monitor configuration with different refresh rates, there is now another reason to get excited for GNOME 3.38.
NVMe ZNS Support Coming To Linux 5.9
Landing in the block subsystem's "-next" tree today is ZNS support for NVMe drives.
And the most popular featured articles:
XFS / EXT4 / Btrfs / F2FS / NILFS2 Performance On Linux 5.8
Given the reignited discussions this week over Btrfs file-system performance stemming from a proposal to switch Fedora on the desktop to using Btrfs, here are some fresh benchmarks of not only Btrfs but alongside XFS, EXT4, F2FS, and for kicks NILFS2 was also tossed into the mix for these mainline file-system tests off the in-development Linux 5.8 kernel.
AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT vs. Intel Core i9 10900K Linux Gaming Performance
Following the 130+ benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen 3000XT series earlier in the week looking at the CPU/system performance on Ubuntu Linux, here is our first look at the Linux gaming performance with putting the Ryzen 9 3900XT up head-to-head against the Intel Core i9 10900K.
The Linux Performance For AMD Rome vs. Intel Cascade Lake One Year After Launch
With the Intel 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable (Cascade Lake) processors having turned a year old in April and next month marking one year since the launch of the AMD EPYC 7002 (Rome) series, here are fresh benchmarks of the dual Xeon Platinum 8280 versus the AMD EPYC 7742 when testing the Linux software stack from early 2019 and then again using a bleeding-edge Linux software stack as of this month. This shows how the Linux software performance has evolved over the past year for both Intel and AMD on the server front as well as how the current top-end SKUs are competing right now.
AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT / Ryzen 7 3800XT / Ryzen 9 3900XT Linux Performance In 130+ Benchmarks
After the AMD Ryzen 3000XT series was announced last month, these new higher-clocked Zen 2 desktop processors are shipping today. Here are 130+ benchmarks on each of the Ryzen 5 3600XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 9 3900XT parts compared to various Intel and AMD CPUs. Tests under Ubuntu Linux and also complemented by performance-per-Watt / power and performance-per-dollar data points.
Intel Core i5 10600K Comet Lake vs. Core i5 Skylake / Haswell / Sandy Bridge
As some additional Core i5 10600K Linux benchmarks for historical perspective, here is a look at how the Core i5 10600K looks in comparison to the Core i5 7600K Skylake, Core i5 4670 Haswell, and Core i5 2500K Sandy Bridge processors on Ubuntu Linux. There were 250 benchmarks ran on each of the CPUs under test.
Radeon RADV+ACO Vulkan Performance Is In Great Shape For Mesa 20.2
With the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" recently switching its default to the ACO shader compiler back-end that is developed with the support of Valve rather than the existing AMDGPU LLVM back-end that is the official open-source AMD shader compiler solution, here are some fresh Linux gaming benchmarks of the RADV driver on the in-development Mesa 20.2 comparing the now-default RADV+ACO configuration against that of the RADV AMDGPU LLVM back-end.
AMD Ryzen "Renoir" CPU Frequency Scaling Governor Performance
With 129 tests carried out while also looking at the CPU power consumption and temperatures during benchmarking, here is a look at how the CPU frequency scaling governor plays a role in the performance of the latest-generation AMD Ryzen 4000 "Renoir" laptops for Linux.
GCC Benchmarks At Varying Optimization Levels With Core i9 10900K Show An Unexpected Surprise
With the Intel Core i9 10900K "Comet Lake" processor here are some fresh GCC compiler benchmarks when looking at the performance of GCC 8.4 versus 9.3 versus a 10.2 snapshot while testing with optimization flags of -O2, -O3 -march=native, and -O3 -march=native -flto.
Seagate FireCuda 520 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD Linux Performance
For those that have been considering the Seagate FireCuda 520 as a PCI Express 4.0 NVMe solid-state drive, here are some benchmarks under Ubuntu Linux with this ZP500GM3A002 drive.
Samsung 870 QVO SSD Performance On Ubuntu Linux
The Samsung 870 QVO solid-state drives announced at the end of June have begun appearing at Internet retailers. The Samsung 870 QVO is the company's latest QLC NAND solid-state drive offering 1TB of storage for a little more than $120 USD all the way up to 4TB for $500 and an 8TB variant for $900. For those curious about the EXT4 file-system Linux performance out of the Samsung 870 QVO, here are some benchmarks.
August meanwhile should be an interesting month with the Linux 5.9 cycle kicking off following the imminent release of Linux 5.8 stable and much more expected to happen.
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