While the Linux kernel has supported Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR) for a decade and a half in varying forms, it hasn’t been supported for all hardware targets. Only in 2021 is the mainline Linux kernel seeing KASLR working for the MIPS-based Loongson64 platform…

Source: Phoronix – Loongson64 Finally Seeing KASLR With Mainline Linux 5.11 Kernel

As expected, the first release candidate of Wine 6.0 is now available for testing for this annual update to Wine for running Windows programs and games on Linux and other platforms…

Source: Phoronix – Wine 6.0-RC1 Released Following Last Minute Changes

Just in time for any holiday Raspberry Pi purchases, an updated Raspberry Pi OS is available today for the Debian-based Linux distribution optimized for these budget ARM SBCs…

Source: Phoronix – Raspberry Pi OS Switches To PulseAudio, Updated Chromium

Google today is announcing the open-sourcing of Atheris, a Python fuzzer they developed internally for automatically finding bugs within Python code and native extensions…

Source: Phoronix – Google Opens Up “Atheris” To Automatically Find Bugs In Python Code

Last week I provided some benchmarks looking at the IBM POWER9 mitigation for the L1 data cache needing to be flushed upon entering the kernel and on user accesses due to a recently disclosed vulnerability. POWER9 allows speculatively operating on validated data in the L1 cache, but when it comes to incompletely validated data paired with other side channels it could lead to local users potentially obtaining improper access to data in the L1 data cache. When benchmarking the impact on a POWER9 4c/16t CPU the overall impact was fairly modest while since then I fired up some benchmarks as well on a large POWER9 server with 44 cores / 176 threads to see the performance impact of this default Linux kernel change.

Source: Phoronix – Another Look At The Performance Impact To IBM’s POWER9 L1d Flushing Change

For the “Video Core Next 2” hardware like Navi as well as Renoir APUs, HEVC “sample adaptive offset” support has landed in Mesa 21.0…

Source: Phoronix – Mesa 21.0 Adds Radeon HEVC SAO Encode Support

Pacman, the excellent package manager on Arch Linux, is working on becoming even more compelling with the in-development Pacman 6.0…

Source: Phoronix – Arch Linux’s Pacman 6.0 Enters Alpha With Parallel Downloads Support

The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) approved a fresh batch of changes this week for Fedora 34 that is due out next spring…

Source: Phoronix – Fedora 34 To Feature Updated MariaDB, Other Changes

In addition to AMD Zen 1/2/3 PowerCap RAPL support coming for the Linux 5.11 kernel, the hwmon-next Git branch has also queued initial support for Zen 3 processors within the AMD_Energy driver…

Source: Phoronix – EPYC Zen 3 CPU Support Coming To Linux’s AMD_Energy Driver

The Linux kernel’s input subsystem is gaining a new “inhibited” property feature as a policy to temporarily block input from given devices, including not using any event from them as a possible wake-up source…

Source: Phoronix – Linux 5.11 Adding An “Inhibited” Feature To Temporarily Disregard Select Input Devices

Ever since AMD has been on a stellar trajectory with their hardware, users have been begging System76 to release an AMD Linux laptop… That’s now finally coming with their upcoming Pangolin launch…

Source: Phoronix – System76 Bringing Out “Pangolin” As An AMD Renoir Linux Laptop

Mesa 20.3 has been released as the Q4’2020 open-source graphics driver update, primarily around providing OpenGL and Vulkan support on the likes of Intel and AMD Radeon graphics along with the reverse-engineered Nouveau support, many smaller drivers especially in the embedded space, and the growing list of CPU-based implementations and other translation efforts…

Source: Phoronix – Mesa 20.3 Released With Big Improvements For Open-Source Graphics Drivers

Following last month’s release of the Ryzen 5000 “Zen 3” processors, AMD has now begun publishing their official compiler support for this extremely compelling processor family…

Source: Phoronix – AMD Sends Out Zen 3 Compiler Support For GCC + AOCC 2.3 Compiler Released

Manjaro 20.2 is now available as the latest stable version of this Arch Linux derived distribution focused on providing a pleasant and easy-to-use desktop experience…

Source: Phoronix – Manjaro 20.2 Brings Arch-Based Linux 5.9 Experience, GNOME Version Defaults To Wayland

While we are still waiting to see what AMD might do for returning to open-source AGESA or better supporting Coreboot and the like, they are making some inroads with open-source firmware support — beyond the context of Chromebooks where they continue to engage due to Google’s engineering requirements. AMD is working to “align with the industry direction of open-source firmware stacks” with their initial focus being on open-source OpenBMC firmware support for their server platforms…

Source: Phoronix – AMD Is Making Progress On Open-Source Firmware – Initially With OpenBMC

The Khronos Group’s glTF specification that is a transmission format for 3D scenes and models continues picking up more impressive capabilities as its adoption by a growing range of software packages continue…

Source: Phoronix – Khronos Brings New Physically Based Rendering Materials Support To glTF

It was just in September that the C++20 standards draft was approved as a major update to the programming language over C++17. While compilers like GCC and LLVM Clang are still completing all of the changes for C++20 support, Clang is already moving ahead and has added support for the “-std=c++2b” option as it begins the endeavor of staging changes likely for C++23…

Source: Phoronix – C++20 Is Still Settling While LLVM Clang Already Adds Option For Starting C++2b/C++23

The BUS1 kernel code for providing an in-kernel, capability-based IPC mechanism hasn’t seen much (or any?) activity in well over a year but at least the Dbus-Broker project continues ahead. Dbus-Broker continues ahead as this D-Bus compatible implementation focused on correctness while being optimized for performance…

Source: Phoronix – Dbus-Broker 25 Released With More Fixes

In addition to OpenZFS 2.0 releasing and Bcachefs hitting up more performance optimizations, some further next-gen Linux storage news is Red Hat’s Stratis Storage 2.3 being released…

Source: Phoronix – Stratis Storage 2.3 Released With Clevis Encryption Policy Support

POCL as the “Portable Computing Language” that implements OpenCL and allows it to function atop CPUs as well as CUDA-enabled NVIDIA GPUs, HSA-supported AMD GPUs, and other possible back-ends, is preparing for a new feature release…

Source: Phoronix – POCL 1.6-RC1 Released With Better CUDA Performance