The Linux kernel's floppy driver dates back to the original days of the kernel back in 1991 and is still being maintained thirty years later with the occasional fix.

Somewhat surprisingly, a patch was sent in to the Linux kernel's block subsystem ahead of the Linux 5.12 merge window around the floppy code.

The patch is an O_NDELAY fix for the floppy driver to address a spew of messages in the kernel log from the floppy driver. Additionally, the driver fails a mount

The second point release to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is now officially released. Notable with Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS is the new hardware enablement (HWE) stack that brings the Linux kernel, Mesa, and related components from Ubuntu 20.10, which means better hardware support that tends to be most notable around better open-source graphics support.

Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS is available this evening across the entire Ubuntu portfolio from desktop to cloud as well as

Security firm Corellium has been working on enabling the Apple M1 SoC under Linux and last month they posted initial Linux kernel patches for the Apple M1 . Meanwhile independent developer Hector Martin has also been working on Apple M1 enablement via crowdfunding and today he posted his initial set of Linux kernel patches for bringing up the Apple 2020 hardware under Linux.

Hector Martin today posted a set of 18 patches as part of his initial bring-up work for the Apple M1 SoC with a focus on the

The AMD " frequency invariance " saga with Linux 5.11 continues... While there was a patch to address the previously noted performance regression caused by the introduction of frequency invariance and seen when using the Schedutil governor, a new CPUFreq-side patch series has been proposed instead -- both of which are addressing the performance issue with this new kernel for AMD Zen 2 / Zen 3 systems.

It started out prior to Christmas when I noticed Linux 5.11 regressing on AMD systems when tested out of

Sent in today to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 5.12 kernel cycle were "fixes" but some interesting items worth noting in this batch.

Primary feature development is over for the DRM graphics drivers of new code they want in for Linux 5.12 since we are now late into the 5.11 release phase, but included as part of today's fixes pull request were a few more notable items.

Already in DRM-Next for this AMD Radeon open-source graphics driver with

The open-source Broadcom graphics driver code most notably used by Raspberry Pi devices will be seeing at least slightly better performance come next quarter's Mesa 21.1 release.

The open-source Broadcom graphics driver code within Mesa continues seeing improvements via the likes of Igalia developers working in cooperation with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The latest work worth giving a shout-out over is the TMU pipelining support for the Broadcom V3D compiler code in Mesa.

The several lines of code allows for queuing more than one

In addition to VKD3D-Proton working on support for DXR ray-tracing another high profile Direct3D 12 feature being implemented on top of Vulkan is support for variable rate shading.

Variable Rate Shading allows for changing the quality of the rendering based upon the region of the frame (screen). This variable rate shading is about allowing for greater performance when not needing consistent rendering quality across the entire frame -- such as for racing games if opting for lower quality rendering outside of the main area/focus

For those wondering where Ubuntu's Mir is being used in current form with their continued development of it these days as a Wayland compositor, it turns out it is being used within smart exercise mirrors as at least one implementation.

Within the latest UBports Ubuntu Touch Q/A there was a presentation by Canonical's Alan Griffiths on Mir in 2021 and in turn the " Miroil " for filling in the missing legacy gaps of Qt Mir support. UBports' Ubuntu Touch with the transition to an Ubuntu 2