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LinuxReviews News Archive

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LibreDWG 0.10.1 Brings GNU One Step Closer To Liberating AutoCAD Files
DWG (short for drawing) is a proprietary file format used by the commercial AutoCAD design software from Autodesk Inc who is hell-bent on preventing compatibility with free software. Liberating the DWG file format has been a Free Software Foundation "High Priority" goal since 2008. The release of LibreWDG 0.10.1 brings them one step closer to that goal.
Linux 5.5rc6 Is Released, 5.5 Final Is Coming In Two To Three Weeks
Linus Torvalds that the holiday season has meant limited activity from both the testing and development side. A longer than usual release-cycle for kernel 5.5 is therefore more likely than not. The majority of changes since the last release-candidate are on the network side with some updates to USB, MID and sound drivers. The problems with the Intel i915 iGPU driver which have plagued the kernel for several major releases remain.
Department of Homeland Security Urges Firefox And Thunderbird Users To Upgrade
The American Department of Homeland Security has issued a National Cyber Awareness System alert urging Firefox users to upgrade to the latest versions of Firefox, Firefox ESR and Thunderbird due to a vulnerability which is being actively exploited in the wild.
Linux Kernel 5.5 Will Not Fix The Frequent Intel GPU Hangs In Recent Kernels
Linux users running machines with Intel integrated graphics have been struggling with frequent system hangs and other problems caused by a buggy i915 kernel module for Intel iGPUs for quite some time. 5.3 series kernels went from being completely useless to problematic as of 5.3.14 while 5.4 series kernels remain utterly broken. Several fixes attempting solve some of the more common problems with Intel graphics chips have been merged into the Linux Kernel mainline git tree the last few days. Problems with frequent hangs remain and it looks like Linux Kernel 5.5 will be as problematic as previous kernels for those using Intel integrated graphics.
Caesar III re-implementation Julius v1.2.0 Is Released
Julius is a free software re-implementation of the Caesar III game from 1998. The game assets are not included so you will have to acquire them separately. The game was originally released for Windows and macOS. Julius makes it playable on Windows, Linux, macOS, PS Vita and the Nintendo Switch with some additional features like support for widescreen resolutions. The latest Julius version has a new --display-scale parameter for high resolution monitors and other fixes.
Mesa 19.3.2 Is Released With SDMA Disabled On Older AMD GPUs
The latest stable version of the Mesa graphics stack has SDMA disabled in the RadeonSI OpenGL backend on AMD GFX8-series graphics cards due to a few reported cases of graphics corruption in OpenGL games on AMD RX 580 graphics cards. The result will be a 0-4% performance-penalty on a older graphics cards ranging from the R9 285 to the RX 580.
Firefox 72.0.1 Released With Fix For Actively Exploited Security Hole
Mozilla Firefox 72.0.1 and ESR 68.4.1, released yesterday, have a fix for a problem in the JIT compiler which Mozilla advices they they "are aware of targeted attacks in the wild abusing this flaw". The releases came only a few days after Firefox 72 was released with floating video windows, notification popup blocking, more cross-site scripting protections and a very long list of fixed security vulnerabilities in previous Firefox versions.
Mesa 20 Will Have SDMA Disabled On AMD RX-Series GPUs
A few bug reports describing corruption on a few OpenGL games on RX 580 GPUs has prompted AMD developers to disable SDMA in the RadeonSI Mesa OpenGL driver on GFX8-series graphics cards. The result will be a 0 to 4% reduction in OpenGL performance in the upcoming Mesa 20 release.
ZFS Will NOT Make It Into The Linux Kernel Any Time Soon
The ZFS file system uses a license which is incompatible with the GNU GPL which is why there is, and always was, close to zero chance of the ZFS file system support landing in the Linux kernel. "The licensing issues just make it a non-starter for me," Linus Torvalds wrote is a response to a totally off-topic question in a thread about the kernels scheduler. "There is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel."
Xfce and GNOME To Get Support For File Creation Timestamps
The Linux Kernel has had support for file creation timestamps since 2017. Several file systems support the file birth timestamp and KDE as well as the Cinnamon file manager Nemo are able to show it in addition to the modification, creation and access timestamps most GNU/Linux are familiar with. Xfce and GNOME are finally moving forward with support for file creation timestamps.
AMD Announced 8 Core Laptop APUs and CPUs and a 64 Core Threadripper CPU at CES 2020
AMD announced an 8-core mobile APU with a 1.8 GHz base clock and an 8-core mobile CPU with a 2.8 GHz base clock for laptops at this year's CES. There was nothing exciting on the desktop GPU front, AMD announced a new mid-range desktop GPU and two mobile GPUs. They also announced a new 64-core Threadripper CPU at a $4000 price-tag.
Trusted Memory Zone Support Coming To AMD APUs in Linux Kernel 5.6
Support for Trusted Memory Zones on AMD APUs has been merged into the linux-next tree which makes it highly likely that Linux 5.6 will have code which allows the GPU driver to encrypt shared system memory used by the graphics driver. Regular programs running on the CPU will not be able to read or write the TMZ memory areas.
Google Stadia Dev Brings Spinlocks Back From The Dead, Blames The Linux Kernels Scheduler For Performance Problems
If you use use spinlocks where mutexes are needed, you suffer all the performance problem you deserve. The Linux kernel provides futexes (fast user-space mutexes) and you should be using those to do locking in games and other applications that require thread synchronization. Don't blame the Linux kernel if you are doing it wrong and your programs performance suffers as a result.
The First Ever Microsoft Linux Conference Is Fully Booked
"Embrace, extend, and extinguish": The American software giant Microsoft will hold its first Linux conference ever March 10th to 11th, 2020 at Redmond in Washington, USA. The conference, which is free, is now fully booked.
SuperTuxKart 1.1 Is Released With Better MultiPlayer Support, Better HiDPI Support and A New Arena Track
The latest release fo the free software kart racing game SuperTuxKart has many improvements to its online multiplayer gaming mode. There is better game synchronization, IPv6 support, improved support for adds, flags indicating where servers are located and many smaller fixed under the hood. There is new emoji support in chats, greatly improved touch-screen support, specially useful for those playing the Android version, and better font scaling and user interface scaling. SuperTuxKart is very usable in 1440p and 4k resolutions. The latest version adds a new gaming arena called "Pumpkin Park". Binaries are available for Linux, Windows, macOS and Android.
Steam's Hardware Survey For December 2019 Places Linux Gaming Interest At A Yearly Low
The latest hardware survey from Valve's Steam game store and launcher has GNU/Linux marketshare at a yearly low of just 0.67% market share. The other operating system numbers in their hardware survey numbers for December 2019 are a bit strange with Windows 10 showing a reduction of 13.14% in favor of Windows 7.
EA Keeps Banning Battlefield V Linux Players
You shouldn't buy games from Electronic Arts (EA) with the hopes of using Wine to run them on a GNU/Linux desktop. Their FairFight "anti-cheat" system will wrongly see you as a cheater and ban you. Appealing is futile, EA stands by their automated system's decisions.
Catfish 1.4.12 Is Released With GNOME and Wayland Support
The graphical file searching tool Catfish has gained support for Wayland and the GNOME shell. All dialog boxes in Xfces "locate" front-end for Linux and BSD use client-side decorations as of version 1.4.12.
Intels 10th-gen Series CPUs Revealed: Up To 10 Cores and 5.3 GHz on 14nm++++
Intel's 10th generation "Comet Lake" CPUs will have hyperthreading across the board. Clock speeds are 100-200 MHz higher and so are TDPs for the K-series chips. The platform will use a new socket LGA 1200 and have 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet as a standard feature. The new i9-10900K flagship will be capable of running at up to 5.3 GHz given adequate cooling.
Huawei Post Record $122 Billion Revenue For 2019 Despite US Government Sanctions
The US government banned Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from doing business with US organizations in May. They made a record profit despite the Americans unfair efforts to give US-based competitors an advantage to make up for their lack of innovation. Huawei Chairman Eric Xu sent a New Years message to employees informing them that Huaweis 2019 revenue exceeded 850 billion Chinese Yuan (about $122 billion USD) which is record high and a 18 percent year over year increase.
LibreOffice 6.4 RC1 Is Available With A New QR-Code Generator, Better Performance And Improved MsOffice Compatibility
The most advanced and comprehensive free software Office solution is nearing another major release. It will have better import filters for Microsoft Office documents, a new QR-Code generator, a new Python API for the database component Base and faster parallelized spreadsheet sorting. The final 6.4 release can be expected early February 2020.
Mpv 0.31.0 Is Released
The latest release of the best and most efficient media player for Linux and Windows has a new lua API for setting screen overlays, a new "sw-fast" profile for fast software conversions when using the X11 and drm video output options, HIDPI window scaling under Wayland and many more, mostly minor, improvements.
Gentoo-Based Calculate Linux 20 Is Released
The Russians have released another major version of their Gentoo-based GNU/Linux distribution Calculate Linux. It is based on Gentoo Linux 17.1. KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, LXQt, Mate and Xfce flavors are available for desktop users. There's also a server and cloud versions available.
Linux 5.5-rc4 Released With Few Changes
The latest release candidate for the upcoming Linux 5.5 kernel has very few changes due to Western holidays. There are a few minor fixes for the i915 kernel driver for Intel GPUs which appears to finally be functioning properly after being a complete mess in 5.3.x and 5.4.x kernels.
BlackArch Linux 2020.01.01 Is Now Available
The latest release of the penetration testing distribution BlackArch Linux comes with Linux Kernel 5.4.6, an updated installer, several minor bugfixes and updated packages. Its 14 GB Live ISO image meant to be used directly from a USB stick has a total of 2428 security-related tools, 120 of which are new in this release.
KDE Conference India 2020 Is Open For Registrations
The thriving Indian KDE community will have a conference at the Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology in Rohini, New Delhi, on January 17th to 19th 2020. The schedule is filled with interesting presentations on topics about Qt, the KDE desktop, KDE applications like kdenlive and free software related topics such as "Are our smartphones outsmarting us?".
Xfce4-Terminal 0.8.9 Is Released With Several Wayland Fixes
The latest minor release of the Xfce desktop environments light-weight terminal emulator has a long list of bug-fixes, many of which are specific to the Wayland display server. Xfce itself does not yet support Wayland but the applications for Xfce can be and are being used on it.
GNOME Internet Radio Locator 2.2.0 Is Released
The latest version of the map and location focused radio tuner for GNOME has a number of new radio stations in Europe and Scandinavia available on its map. There's also updated translations for several languages.
Web Browser Performance: Chromium 79 vs Firefox 71
We tested the latest versions of Chromium and Firefox on three different systems to see which one is faster in four different tests. There is a clear winner when it comes to graphics performance as well as synthetic JavaScript and WebAssembly benchmarks. How much of a win depends on the hardware, how large the performance gap between Firefox and Chromium is very much dependant on how weak or strong hardware they are running on is.
Linux 5.6 Will Likely Have USB 4 Support
Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linus Torvalds second in command, has merged code from Intel with USB 4 support into the Linux kernels linux-next.git tree. It is therefore highly likely that Linux 5.6 will support USB 4 devices with features like DisplayPort tunnelling, PCIe tunnelling and P2P networking. Only Intel and Apple host devices are supported by the current patches.