Linux

Beyond the usual new wired/wireless network hardware support and the other routine churn in the big Linux networking subsystem, the Linux 6.8 kernel is bringing some key improvements to the core networking code that can yield up to a ~40% improvement for TCP performance when encountering many concurrent network connections.

First up, there's been an analysis and reorganization of core networking structures. This effort has been around optimizing cacheline consumption and adding safeguards to ensure future changes don't regress. In turn this optimizing of core networking structures is causing TCP performance with many concurrent connections to increase by as much as 40% or more!

As anticipated Linus Torvalds went ahead and just released the Linux 6.7 kernel as the first new version of 2024.

Following the one week delay to avoid a New Year's Eve release, Linus Torvalds christened Linux 6.7 a few minutes ago. It's now released for those that roll your own kernel builds.

Linus wrote in the brief 6.7 announcement:

"6.7 is (in number of commits: over 17k non-merge commits with 1k+ merges) one of the largest kernel releases we've ever had, but the extra rc8 week was purely due to timing with the holidays, not about any difficulties with the larger release.

The main changes this last week were a few DRM updates (mainly fixes for new hw enablement in this version - both amd and nouveau), some more bcachefs fixes (and bcachefs is obviously new to 6.7 and one of the reasons for the large number of commits), and then a few random driver updates. And a smattering of minor noise elsewhere."

Linux 6.7 has many exciting features including initial support for the Bcachefs file-system, Intel Meteor Lake graphics are stable as is the rest of the MTL platform support, initial NVIDIA GSP firmware support with the Nouveau driver, retiring of Intel Itanium support, and other new features with Linux 6.7.

Now it's onward to the exciting Linux 6.8 merge window.

One of the limitations of Google Chrome's Wayland support has been the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) not being supported for GPU-based video acceleration as it's directly targeted the libva-x11 library. But with code merged on Friday to Chromium, libva-drm is now used to allow for working VA-API acceleration on X11 or Wayland.

The latest Chrome/Chromium browser code now allows for VA-API to work on the Linux Ozone/Wayland platform. The explicit VA-API X11 library use is now using the DRM library instead so that both Ozone's X11 and Wayland platforms are using the same target. Chrome VA-API Wayland support MR

The Linux VA-API support at large for Google Chrome remains a "best effort" solution but in any event this change is a welcome move for enhancing the Google Chrome web browser with native Wayland support for this common video acceleration API.

See this merge for more information on Chrome's forthcoming Wayland VA-API support.

Similar to the long-worked-on GNOME dynamic triple buffering that is applied when the (most commonly integrated) graphics fall behind schedule in rendering the desktop, a merge request for KDE's KWin compositor has also seen similar work in this area for helping the iGPU catch-up in rendering via a "triple buffering" implementation.

Prolific KWin developer Xaver Hugl opened a merge request overnight that in effect is dynamic triple buffering akin to what Canonical/Ubuntu has worked on the past few years for GNOME. Xaver explained in that pull request:

"When it takes more than one refresh cycle to render a frame, which isn't unheard of with weak integrated GPUs, KWin starts compositing immediately and we may or may not hit the vblank deadline. If it's missed, then the buffer takes a whole refresh cycle of the display to be used, which means the refresh rate drops to half of what it should be - resulting in a less smooth appearance and increased latency.

With this MR, KWin schedules frames so that they can always hit the vblank deadline, and allows a maximum of two frames to be pending at the same time. This means that if the GPU can't keep up, latency will be increased just as much as is needed instead of almost one entire additional frame of latency and the halved refresh rate."

Currently the merge request is considered in draft form as there are some open items around the transitioning between double and triple buffering, whether to also add similar triple buffering for KDE on X.Org, and better handling of render time queries still needs to be wired up.

We'll see where this KWin triple buffering work leads and how soon before it's ready for merging.

Eric Engestrom has issued an on-time bi-weekly point release for the Mesa 3D graphics drivers today principally composed of open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers commonly used by the Linux desktop.

Mesa 23.3.2 is a bit on the lighter side, which can be attributed to end-of-year holidays or just Mesa 23.3 overall being in better shape.

Among the bug fixes to arrive in Mesa 23.3.2 are a few driver fixes for RADV / Etnaviv / R600g / Iris / ANV / RadeonSI, continued fixes to the Rusticl OpenCL-on-Rust driver, and other small fixes. Baldur's Gate 3 bad rendering

Of the Intel fixes for this point release is the Vulkan workaround change for Baldur's Gate 3.

The full list of Mesa 23.3.2 changes can be found via today's release announcement.

fjärrinlägg från: https://lemmy.ml/post/3876655

Happy birthday 🎊🎉 GNU/Linux.

Today GNU/Linux is 32 years old.

It was thankfully released to the public on August 25th, 1991 by Linus Torvalds when he was only 21 years old student.

What a lovely journey 🤍

Richard Hughes of Red Hat has just released Fwupd 1.9.4 as the newest version of thus open-source software that goes along with the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) for making it easy to deploy new firmware/BIOS updates for systems and countless peripherals under Linux.

Fwupd 1.9.4 brings support for more hardware devices as well as carrying a number of fixes and various core improvements. Newly-supported devices with Fwupd 1.9.4 include the:

• Genesys GL352350 and GL3590
• Logitech Huddle
• Microsoft USB-C Travel Hub
• PixArt BLE HPAC OTA
• Quectel RM520
• Synaptics Triton devices
• VIA VL122, VL817S and VL822T
• Wacom One 13 and One 12 Tablets

Great seeing more Logitech, Wacom, and Synaptics devices continuing to be supported by Fwupd. For those wondering whether Microsoft authored the support for the Microsoft USB-C Travel Hub firmware updating, no, I was curious too but Richard Hughes ended up doing that himself while working out more of the CFU protocol support.

Fwupd 1.9.4 also adds a new HSI attribute to detect any missing Intel Downfall/GDS mitigation, allow configuring the refresh interval per-remote rather than per-system, showing the firmware release checksum within Fwupd CLI tools, and nearly two dozen bugs have been fixed.

Fwupd 1.9.4 downloads for those building from source can be found on GitHub.

QEMU 8.1 is now available as the latest feature update to this important piece of the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

QEMU 8.1 brings a number of new features including:

• New x86 CPU model of Intel Granite Rapids.

• The Tiny Code Generator (TCG) now supports RDPID instruction, AES instructions can use AES acceleration on the host processor, and other new features exposed.

• A wide variety of RISC-V architecture improvements from supporting BF16 extensions to the Zfa extension, Zcm* extensions, and many others. The Ventana Veyron V1 CPU has also been added plus many RISC-V fixes.

• Support for LoongArch LSX extensions and various fixes for this CPU architecture.

• KVM VMs on a host with support for the Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) can now use MTE within the guests.

• Adding the new CPU type of Cortex Neoverse V1 (neoverse-v1). Separately on the ARM side there is also a new Banana Pi BPI-M2 Ultra (bpim2u) board model.

• A new "virtio-multiotuch-pci" input device was added as a multi-touch capable input device.

• Improved e1000e and IGB Intel network device emulation.

• Shadow virtqueue offload support for the vhost-vDPA interface.

• A new PipeWire based audio back-end for QEMU.

• Support for multi-touch events with the GTK interface.

More details on the dozens of QEMU 8.1 feature changes via the QEMU Wiki. QEMU 8.1 can be downloaded from QEMU.org.

Nate Graham is out with his weekly KDE development summary to highlight all of the interesting changes to this open-source desktop environment with Plasma 6 development continuing at full-speed ahead.

It's another interesting week in the KDE Plasma 6 development world, including a new default change: KDE double click default

• By default in Plasma 6.0 it will be single-click to select files/holders but now double-click to open files. It's user-configurable but the default action now is indeed to double-click for opening files/folders with Plasma 6.

• The KWin blur effect is rewritten for better reliability and performance.

• The DrKonqi crash reporting wizard has been rewritten and simplified.

• There is now an on-screen display when cycling through keyboard brightness levels.

• All Plasma 6 icons now come from the system-wide icon theme with the concept of icons in the Plasma style being removed.

• Settings dialogs that use QtWidgets now have a search field in the header area for finding settings on individual pages.

• An improved Breeze icon for backup files and .bak.

• Multiple Plasma crash fixes.

More details on all of the KDE changes this week via Nate's blog.

Last year the DisplayPort 2.1 specification was published and now Intel's open-source Linux engineers are working on adding support to the kernel for handling of the DisplayPort Alternate Mode 2.1 support for that DP operation over USB Type-C connections.

On Friday Intel engineers sent out the patches for enabling cable identification flow that is needed for advertising DisplayPort Alternate Mode 2.1 support. The changes aren't to the Intel Linux graphics driver but rather the kernel's USB Type-C driver. Additionally, there are changes to the Chrome cros_ec_typec driver code -- likely indicating Intel's interests around DP Alt Mode 2.1 support is for Intel-powered Chromebooks. USB Type-C connection

The DisplayPort Alternate Mode 2.1 specification requires the Type-C driver configure additional cable details around signaling, UHBR13.5, cable type, and DPAM version reporting.

This patch series lays out the DisplayPort Alternate Mode 2.1 support for Linux and this code is now under review prior to being mainlined.

The Debian Project released today updated kernel and intel-microcode packages for all supported Debian GNU/Linux releases to address the recently disclosed “Downfall” vulnerability affecting Intel CPUs, as well as the “INCEPTION” hardware vulnerability affecting AMD Zen CPUs.

Discovered by Daniel Moghimi, “Downfall” (a.k.a. CVE-2022-40982) is a GDS (Gather Data Sampling) hardware vulnerability that allows unprivileged speculative access to data that was previously stored in vector registers.

Affecting both Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” and Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” systems, this vulnerability allows a user to access and steal data from other users on the same computer.

“For instance, a malicious app obtained from an app store could use the Downfall attack to steal sensitive information like passwords, encryption keys, and private data such as banking details, personal emails, and messages,” says Daniel Moghimi.

This flaw is now patched in the 5.10.179-5 kernel package of Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” and 6.1.38-4 kernel package of Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm”. However, to fully mitigate the vulnerability, users will also have to install the intel-microcode 3.20230808.1~deb11u1 package.

The new intel-microcode security update also patches CVE-2022-41804, an unauthorized error injection in Intel SGX or Intel TDX for some Intel Xeon CPUs that may allow a local user to potentially escalate privileges, as well as CVE-2023-23908, a flaw that would lead to improper access control in some 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, which may result in an information leak.

On top of that, the new Debian Bullseye and Bookworm kernel security updates address CVE-2023-20569, a security flaw known as “INCEPTION” or Speculative Return Stack Overflow (SRSO), another hardware vulnerability that affects all AMD Zen CPUs.

Discovered by Daniel Trujillo, Johannes Wikner, and Kaveh Razavi, this flaw could allow an attacker to mis-train the CPU BTB to predict non-architectural CALL instructions in the kernel space. Then, the attacker could use this to control the speculative target of a subsequent kernel RET, which could lead to information disclosure via a speculative side-channel attacks.

To mitigate the “Downfall” and “INCEPTION” flaws, the Debian Project recommends all Debian Bullseye and Bookworm users to update their kernel and intel-microcode packages to the new versions available in the repositories as soon as possible.

To update your installations, run the sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade command in a terminal emulator.

Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS is now available as the newest point release to this current long-term support series.

Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS rolls-up all the security patches and other stable release updates currently in the Ubuntu 22.04 "Jammy Jellyfish" package archive. This makes for a quicker experience on new Ubuntu Linux deployments without having so many updates to handle post-install.

Additionally, and arguably most exciting with Ubuntu 22.04.3, is the hardware enablement "HWE" stack upgrade. Ubuntu 22.04.3 provides a newer Linux kernel and Mesa as an option compared to what shipped in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to this point. The new HWE stack is what's found in Ubuntu 23.04 upstream: the Linux 6.2 kernel along with Mesa 23.0 for the newer open-source graphics drivers.

fjärrinlägg från: https://lemmy.helvetet.eu/post/63602

Merged for Mesa 23.3 is support for the VirGL code to handle accelerated AV1 video decoding within guest virtual machines.

Thanks to this code merged into the Virglrenderer and this now-merged Mesa code, there is support for AV1 video decoding that can be enjoyed by QEMU/KVM guests -- assuming the host GPU is capable of AV1 decode.

Feng Jiang with China's Kylin OS project worked on this AV1 decode hook-up and shared this screenshot of the Blender film Big Buck Bunny running successfully with AV1 decode inside a QEMU/KVM guest:

Mesa 23.3 will be out in Q4 as the next major feature series for this open-source GPU driver stack.

fjärrinlägg från: https://lemmy.ndlug.org/post/40773

The developer working on integrating network display functionality into GNOME Shell shared short video clip to the GNOME sub-reddit [...] the feature adds a “screencast” button to the row of actions in the Quick Settings menu. Clicking this opens a modal picker where the user can select any Miracast or Chromecast compatible displays on the network.

fjärrinlägg från: https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/c75f55c9-df77-4aaf-a4ab-0045a5450cce

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#Linux #OpenSource #technews

00:00 Intro 00:45 Sponsor: Free guide on spotting vulnerabilities in your code 01:47 Chrome OS becomes a real Linux distro 03:54 GNOME is working on a replacement for the Activities button 05:52 Mint outlines their plans for 21.3 and Debian Edition 07:58 Fedora Asahi Linux brings Fedora to Apple Silicon 09:18 Plasma 6 progress report 10:37 GNOME improves performance 12:03 Battery life focused driver updates 13:25 Gaming News: Linux passes macOS in Steam market share 15:01 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:04 Support the channel

Chrome OS becomes a real Linux distro

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/google-is-finally-separating-chrome-from-chromeos-for-easier-updates/

GNOME is working on a replacement for the Activities button

https://www.omglinux.com/gnome-test-activities-button-replacement/

https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/os-mockups/-/issues/227

Mint outlines their plans for 21.3 and Debian Edition

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/08/linux-mint-21-3-plans

Fedora Asahi Linux brings Fedora to Apple Silicon

https://asahilinux.org/2023/08/fedora-asahi-remix/

Plasma 6 progress report

https://pointieststick.com/2023/08/03/august-plasma-6-progress-update/

https://blog.neon.kde.org/2023/08/04/announcing-kde-neon-experimental/

GNOME improves performance

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/08/twig-107/

https://blogs.gnome.org/chergert/2023/08/04/more-sysprofing/

Battery life focused driver updates

https://9to5linux.com/mesa-23-2-brings-opengl-3-1-opengl-es-3-0-support-on-asahi-new-radv-features

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.6-cpupower

Gaming News: Linux passes macOS in Steam market share

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Stats-July-2023

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/08/ubisoft-connect-broke-again-but-valve-fixed-it-in-proton-experimental/