News/9

• Chris Down, Facebook: Linux memory management at scale
  
  
  Facebook-employed Linux kernel engineer Chris Down held a 40 minute talk about memory management at the Arch Conf 2020 today. It was filled with useful insights, tips and strategies for Linux memory management using modern kernel frame-works like cgroups and tools like the oomd userspace Out-Of-Memory killer. The memory management strategies that vastly improved Facebook's servers may benefit your servers or perhaps just your desktop or laptop.
  
• AMD Hopes To Get Sensor Fusion Hub Driver For AMD Laptop Gyroscopes And Other Sensors Into Linux 5.10
  
  
  AMD's Sandeep Singh has submitted yet another revision of AMD's Linux HID driver for the Sensor Fusion Hub hardware in all AMD laptops based on Ryzen processors. That makes it eight in total. This could be the lucky revision that makes it into the Linux kernel when the Linux 5.10 merge window opens up on Monday.
  
• Arch Linux: Past, Present and Future
  
  
  Allan McRae gave a very detailed overview of the 18 years of Arch Linux and Levente Polyak gave insights into the current state of Arch and it's potential future in a joint presentation at Arch Conf 2020 on October 10th, 2020. It's a great watch if you want to learn the history of Arch and know what changes it may potentially have in the future.
  
• How Arch Linux Manage Their Servers: "Infrastructure at Arch: Making servers go brrrrr"
  
  
  Sven-Hendrik Haaase gave an enlightening talk about the servers and the infrastructure used by Arch Linux to serve packages, The Arch Linux Wiki and the rest of the services the Arch Linux team provides at the Arch Linux Conf 2020 on Saturday October 10th, 2020. The video is about 30 minutes + 15 minutes of Q&A.
  
• Intel's latest NEO OpenCL Driver Claims Support For OpenCL 3.0 On All Intel Chips Going Back To Broadwell
  
  
  Intel's latest NEO OpenCL driver, now going by the name Compute-Runtime since it has gained support for more than just OpenCL compute, claims to have OpenCL 3.0 support on all Intel chips going back to Broadwell. It doesn't actually support OpenCL 3.0 on anything other than Intel's latest Tiger Lake chips, but it does claim to.
  
• LibreOffice 7.0.2 Is Released With 131 Bug-Fixes
  
  
  The latest minor LibreOffice-release has a really long list of 131 bug-fixes. Many of them are related to third party files that can be opened in LibreOffice such as .docx, .xlxs and .pptx. 18 bug-fixes are related to various crashes and the rest of the bug-fixes seem to be all over the place.
  
• Watch Arch Conf 2020 Live October 10th to 11th, 2020
  
  
  The annual Arch Linux conference take place virtually this weekend. You can tune in via live streams provided by either C3VOC (Chaos Computer Club) or Amazon Twitch and enjoy talks such as "Making servers go brrrrr", "Rolling your own security team for fun and no profit at all" and "Arch Linux: Past, Present and Future". The conference starts at 10.00 UTC (12.00 CET, 03:00 PDT).
  
• Wine 5.19 Is Released With 27 Bug-Fixes
  
  
  The latest Wine Is Not An Emulator Windows API re-implementation has game-specific fixes for a long list of games including Beach Life, The Sims Complete Collection, Risk II, Earth 2150, Need for Russia, World of Warcraft, Avencast: Rise of the Mage, Mahjong Titans, Resident Evil HD and Fallout New Vegas. The vast majority of the new code in this release was written by the Codeweavers corporation.
  
• First UbuntuDDE Remix 20.10 Groovy Beta Is Released
  
  
  UbuntuDDE Remix 20.10 Groovy Beta is a GNU/Linux distribution based on the Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla beta released last week. It features the latest version of the very user-friendly yet powerful Deepin Desktop Environment instead of the laughable and utterly useless tablet/smart-TV desktop environment Ubuntu's regular release ships with. This beta-release is primarily for testers. We tested it and we liked it.
  
• Beware People Who Enter Free Software Projects Only for Power Trips
  
  
  Sociologists have long recognized the threat of insecure people in positions of power (imposters who overcompensate for a lack of qualifications). Overzealous moderators on a power trip are posing a threat to the integrity and atmosphere in Free software projects, where pressure, fear and vengeance become stronger motivators than something positive like altruism and enthusiasm (sharing one’s technical skills)
  
• Google Chrome 86 and Brave 1.13.82, Both Based On Chromium 86, Are Released With Security Enhancements And New Features
  
  
  There are many security enhancements, new APIs, background tab resource-limits, new CSS rules and other goodies in Chromium 86 and browsers based on that web browser such as Chrome 86 and Brave 1.13.82. Chromium 86 is slightly slower on Linux machines with Intel processors and Intel graphics and marginally faster on machines with AMD processors and AMD graphics.
  
• AMD Announces Four 5000-Series Ryzen CPUs
  
  
  AMD announced four new 5000-series Zen3 processors in a marketing presentation titled "Where Gaming Begins" today. The processors have 6 to 16 cores and base clocks between 3.4 and 3.8 GHz with boost clocks up to 4.9 GHz. TDP is listed as 105W for all but the 6-core model. The new processors will have a MSRP between $300 and $800 when they reach stores on November 5th, 2020. AMD claims the processors will have a 19% IPC performance uplift.
  
• GIMP 2.10.22 Is Released With AVIF Support And Improved Support For Many Other File Formats
  
  
  GIMP 2.10.22 has a lot of new features for a minor version bump, most of which are related to image file formats. There's support for the AVIF image format based on the AV1 video format, 10 and 12 bit AVIF and HEIF images, better JPEG and WebP detection and better support for files from good old Paint Shop Pro.
  
• 3rd Ova Magica Tech Demo Released
  
  
  Developer ClaudiaTheDev has released a third tech demo of a interesting new game called Ova Magica. The proprietary kick-starter funded game will be available for GNU/Linux, Windows and macOS. It is still in somewhat early stages of development, yet it is already playable with a small 3D world featuring a farm you can explore, good graphics and blob battle training.
  
• DXVK DirectX To Vulkan Translation Layer 1.7.2 Released
  
  
  The latest DXVK Direct3D 9 to 11 to Vulkan translation layer has seven game-specific fixes and some Direxct3D 9 fixes specific to AMD's AMDVLK Vulkan driver. DXVK can be used as an alternative to Wine's own wined3d DX 9-11 to OpenGL translation layer while we wait for Wine to get their own C-implemented DX 9-11 to Vulkan back-end ready.
  
• US-China DRAM Patent War Rumored To Be Escalating
  
  
  The Chinese memory manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies is making great progress ramping up its production of 8 GiB DDR4 and LPDDR4 DRAM chips. The memory cartel does not like competition from a new player. It is rumored that American Micron Technology is planning on launching a patent lawsuit against ChangXin in order to lock them out of the American market.
  
• U-Boot 2020.10 Is Released With Support For Lots Of New Hardware
  
  
  U-Boot is a lesser-known Germany boot loader that's actually quite widely deployed on things like embedded devices, Chromebooks, networking gear and SpaceX rockets. The latest v2020.10 has a rather long list of interesting changes considering that it's only been three months since the last v2020.07 release.
  
• Python 3.9 Is Released
  
  
  The latest version of the Python programming language has a long list of new features and a lot of optimizations. Working with dictionaries, time-zones, strings and a lot more has become easier with new functionality and syntax simplification.
  
• The Fedora For Smartphones Is Being Revived With A PinePhone Edition
  
  
  The Fedora mobility team is back after ten years of inactivity. They are currently developing a Fedora Smartphones edition for the PinePhone smartphone. Future versions could add support for other smartphones such as the Librem 5 and the OnePlus 5.
  
• Mesa Developers Debate Using Rust Code In Mesa
  
  
  The Mesa code-base does not have any code written in the Rust programming language. That could change. Alyssa Rosenzweig has taken the initiative to allow parts of Mesa to be written in Rust.
  
• Four Malicious Packages In The NPM Repository With Names Similar To Popular Packages Were Phoning User Data Home
  
  
  Be careful what you npm install. Four packages in the NPM repository, published by a single author, where caught sending device fingerprint information, IP and geo-location data to a public GitHub page upon installation. All of them used package names similar to popular and widely used NPM packages.
  
• Free Software Foundation Turns 35
  
  
  The Free Software foundation was founded 35 years ago - on October 4th, 1985. The FSF plans on celebrating with a live video event broadcast from fsf.org on Friday afternoon. FSF is one of the few organizations that fight for true end-user freedom, not just vague concepts like "open source".
  
• Linux 5.9-rc8 Is Out With PCIe IDs for AMDs Upcoming Sienna Cichlid GPUs
  
  
  We have examined the latest Linux 5.9 release candidate and found that it is actually possible to use it to boot and start X or Wayland on machines with Intel processors using Intel integrated graphics with this latest kernel release-candidate. That is an improvement since the total train-wreck disaster released as Linux 5.9-rc7.
  
• GIMP Starts Offering Nightly GIMP 3.0 Pre-Release Builds, But Only For Windows
  
  
  The GNU Image Manipulation community is rapidly moving forward to a big 3.0 release, using GTK+3, with a lot of development going on behind the scenes. It may not appear that way since the 2.10.x branch releases have been slow incremental releases with a few big and small features added for years now. Big things have been happening and the GIMP community is highlighting that by offering nightly snapshot builds of the upcoming GIMP 3.0 release. There's currently only nightly packages Windows users. Nightly Flatpak releases for GNU/Linux users are planned.
  
• Richard Matthew Stallman is Still Monitoring the Attacks on Software Freedom
  
  
  Watching without saying much, for now... Richard Stallman (RMS) is exploring new ways to deal with new threats to software freedom, even if it’s done mostly behind the scenes (dodging those hyenas who defamed him ‘out of office’ at MIT).
  
• KDE Launches MyKDE Identity Service
  
  
  The KDE community has launched a second attempt at a "unified login system" for all KDE websites called MyKDE. The new system will replace the old "KDE Identity" "central account manager" because it was "severely outdated and hindering the upgrade of several other systems". KDE community members can use the new MyKDE identity system to login to KDE Wiki's and it will soon work on most of KDE's websites.
  
• Nmap 7.90 Is Released With 1,200 New Fingerprints And 70+ Bugs Squashed
  
  
  The number one free software port scanning tool, as seen in movies like The Matrix Reloaded, Ocean's 8, Oliver Stone's 2016 Snowden film, Dredd, Elysium, Fantastic Four, The Bourne Ultimatium, Yippee Ki-Yay!, The Listening and Battle Royale, just got a lot better at identifying remote systems.
  
• AMDVLK v-2020.Q3.6 Is Released With Four Game-Specific Fixes
  
  
  The latest AMDVLK driver has one new Vulkan extension and game-specific fixes for Doom VFR, Baldur's Gate 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2. AMDVLK's performance is still worse, in some cases far worse, than what the RADV Mesa Vulkan driver from Mesa 20.2.0 offers. AMDVLK v-2020.Q3.6 does offer better compatibility so it may be worth installing it side-by-side the Mesa RADV Vulkan driver if you own a AMD graphics card.
  
• Linux Desktop Market Share Nearly Halved During September 2020
  
  
  Operating system statistics from NetMarketShare has GNU/Linux market share tumbling from 3.57% in July to 2.69% in August to 1.47% in September 2020. Meanwhile, the Steam Hardware Survey shows a modest +0.05% increase in September.
  
• Decentralized Social Networks vs. The Trolls
  
  
  Developers and users of the somewhat decentralized and very poorly connected collection of social networks called the "Fediverse" gathered at this years "ActivityPub Conference" last week. Derek Caelin presented an interesting video called Decentralized Social Networks vs. The Trolls at that conference. It is highly educational and worth a watch if you think free speech, traditional moral values, milk, Korean pop music, random hand gestures used for hundreds of years and being against child pornography being openly broadcast on Netflix is "hate speech" and "right wing extremism" that should be censored. It is also interesting if you just want to learn about the mind-set of the people with that kind of world-view.
  

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