The Linux 5.12 merge window is drawing to a close this weekend while being sent in this morning were the RISC-V updates that tend to excite the free software enthusiasts.

Notable with RISC-V in Linux 5.12 is initial support for the SiFive FU740, the SoC design announced at the end of last year . The most notable major user coming to market at the moment with the FU740 is the HiFive Unmatched development board . The SoC with its quad-core

As a quick PSA for those that may be eager to test out early Git builds of the Linux 5.12 kernel, I've been hitting a very nasty issue on multiple systems leading to corruption / data loss.

( TLDR: Will report upstream when having more information in a brief manner with shorter steps to reproduce than first needing to run a number of benchmarks, but for now just mentioning this for those that may otherwise be eager in trying out Linux 5.12 Git on systems where you would

Last week saw the main set of ACPI and power management updates for Linux 5.12 while for the second week of the merge window has been the follow-up work with Intel Simple Firmware Interface removal and also an additional ACPI update.

Noteworthy with yesterday's ACPI pull is support for parsing of the ACPI Firmware Performance Data Table (FPDT) and now exposing that under sysfs. The ACPI FPDT tables provide platform initialization platform records with data pertaining to the boot process. Via the Firmware Performance Data Table it'

Last week the main set of DRM subsystem updates were sent in for the Linux 5.12 merge window. That pull included exciting additions like Radeon RX 6000 series OverDrive and Intel Xe VRR . Mistakenly left out of that pull request last week were the open-source Qualcomm Adreno driver improvements for the "MSM" kernel driver while now that code has landed.

As previously noted, there are some noteworthy Adreno improvements this cycle. The driver now has support for the Adreno 508 / 50

The newest GNU project seeing its first release is GNU Poke, which is being inaugurated at v1.0 after being in development for the past three years.

GNU Poke 1.0 is an interactive editor for binary data that beyond basic editing capabilities has an integrated, interactive programming language for describing data structures and operating on them. There is a GUI in the works for Poke along with many other features planned but after the initial three years of development they feel it's now in good enough shape for declaring a

Genode OS 21.02 is out as the latest feature release to this open-source operating system framework.

Some of the improvements with Genode OS 21.02 include:

- Support for pluggable network device drivers.

- Initial support for the Pine A64-LTS board as part of the operating system framework's goal of getting itself on the PinePhone by the end of the calendar year.

- Support for mobile data connectivity via LTE, again important if they are to be a contender on

The new OpenGL renderer work for GTK 4 as a post-4.0 improvement is shaping up well and should really help push along the open-source toolkit on macOS.

Well known GNOME developer Christian Hergert of Red Hat has been working on effectively a new OpenGL renderer with a particular focus on helping the macOS support but obviously benefits all GL platforms as well.

While macOS has Vulkan support by way of MoltenVK and with GTK 4.0 there is an early Vulkan renderer, Hergert noted in a blog post how right

Blender 2.92 is out today as the latest feature release for this award-winning, open-source 3D graphics/modeling software.

Among the many enhancement to find with Blender 2.92 include:

- Geometry Nodes has landed as a new node-based system for creating and manipulating geometry. Further improvements to Geometry Nodes are expected over the coming releases.

- Support for editing grease pencil strokes as curves.

- Support for interactively creating primitives.

- More efficient memory usage around volume rendering by using

Intel's "Simple Firmware Interface" that dates back to the company's early Atom-powered mobile days is being eliminated with the in-development Linux 5.12 kernel.

More than one decade ago with the Intel Moorestown platform, Simple Firmware Interface (SFI) was envisioned as a solution for lightweight devices in place of a complete ACPI implementation. Intel hasn't employed the Simple Firmware Interface as part of their platform design in years while ACPI is alive and well. Last year Intel engineers marked SFI