SYCL as the single-source C++-based programming model for heterogeneous parallel programming is now revised to the SYCL 2020 specification released today by The Khronos Group.

SYCL 2020 as the successor to the SYCL 1.2.x standard adds unified shared memory (USM) support, parallel reductions, work group and subgroup algorithm support, expanded interoperability, and SYCL atomic operations that more closely behave like C++ atomics. There are more than 40 new features of SYCL 20

While it was a sad blow when PC-BSD/TrueOS stopped pursuing its desktop ambitions as what was arguably the leading BSD desktop operating system out there with a nice end-user experience, since then we have seen efforts like MidnightBSD, GhostBSD, and others fill the avoid with continuing to enhance the out-of-the-box BSD desktop system. A new entrant that is quite interesting is helloSystem that aims to be a "macOS of BSDs" for a polished desktop experience.

This weekend during the virtual FOSDEM

Last month was the delightful news that Ubuntu 21.04 is aiming to use Wayland by default for non-NVIDIA systems on the GNOME desktop rather than the X.Org session. While there is two months to go until the Ubuntu 21.04 release, there still is more work ahead in making that shift a reality.

The Ubuntu developers working on the Wayland-by-default transition have made their Trello workboard now public and it offers a glimpse at some of their planning and challenges around this

Exfatprogs 1.1 have been released as the open-source, user-space utilities around the Linux/Android exFAT file-system support maintained by Samsung.

The Linux/open-source exFAT file-system support continues to mature on Linux. The Samsung-backed kernel driver is quite stable and reliable at this point in the kernel while Exfatprogs continues to mature for the user-space tooling around dealing with this file-system that is common to today's SD/SDHC cards and other consumer electronic devices.

While so far only the NVIDIA proprietary driver on Linux supports the Vulkan ray-tracing extensions, eventually we will see support for these new Vulkan extensions with the AMD Vulkan drivers for the Radeon RX 6000 series and newer. There has also been work by Intel in preparing for Vulkan ray-tracing with Xe HPG . For when the time comes to test those implementations, there is finally one good, open-source, automated Vulkan RT benchmark so far.

Developer Tanguy Fautre has been working on "RayTracingInVulkan"

There are a new round of kernel patches posted today by NVIDIA for the open-source, traditionally reverse-engineered "Nouveau" graphics driver: implementing support for SVM atomic memory operations.

NVIDIA has in the past posted Nouveau patches pertaining to Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) and Heterogeneous Memory Management (HMM). Their proprietary driver has been implementing bits of HMM and other new Linux kernel interfaces while with NVIDIA providing relevant pieces to Nouveau allows for demonstrating an open-source "client" / user of new code for satisfying

The work-in-progress FUTEX2 system call for improving Windows games on Linux via Wine / Steam Play remains one of the items left to be addressed in 2021 with the work on that being funded by Valve and tackled by Collabora engineers.

André Almeida of Collabora presented at last month's Linux.Conf.Au 2021 virtual summit on the FUTEX2 system call designed to succeed the current FUTEX implementation for better resource utilization and other functionality that will yield a more performant Windows-

KDE developer Roman Gilg continues pushing ahead with KWinFT as a fork of the KWin window manager / compositor and other select components. He spent a lot of time last year better optimizing the X11 and Wayland handling while he's been relentlessly working this year to push it even further.

Roman has released the KWinFT 5.21 Beta following what he describes as a "monumental rewrite" to the windowing logic as part of an overall "windowing revolution." For this windowing revolution Gilg has been working on flattening