RSS Reader

OpenZFS 2.0 Released With Unified FreeBSD/Linux Support, Many New Features

Phoronix | Nov. 30, 2020, 5 p.m. | Original

OpenZFS 2.0 has been officially released! OpenZFS 2.0 marks a major step forward for open-source ZFS file-system support for what started out as ZFSOnLinux but is now OpenZFS with unified FreeBSD and Linux support (macOS support is still being pursued as well) and this release also bringing many new features.

In addition to the unified code-base for Linux and FreeBSD, OpenZFS 2.0 adds persistent L2ARC support, Zstd compression support, redacted streams, sequential resilvering, various ZFS command/

Fedora Looks To Provide Standalone XWayland Package Tracking X.Org Server Git

Phoronix | Nov. 30, 2020, 3:50 p.m. | Original

With the X.Org Server being "abandonware" but at the same time the upstream XWayland portion of the codebase continuing to be worked on, Fedora developers at Red Hat are looking at splitting XWayland into its own standalone package to make it easier to ship it without having to use the rest of the xorg-server code-base.

While Red Hat developers previously worked to manage X.Org Server releases, there isn't much upside to that these days and they would rather ship a standalone XWayland package for Fedora

Mesa 20.3 Is Near With Lavapipe Vulkan, Raspberry Pi V3DV, Better AMD RDNA2 Support

Phoronix | Nov. 30, 2020, 2:28 p.m. | Original

The weekly release candidates of Mesa 20.3 fell off the wagon last week due to the US Thanksgiving holiday but now is updated today for Mesa 20.3-RC3.

Mesa 20.3-RC3 is out and things are looking good for the stable release potentially in a week or two. There remains just one blocker bug left before Mesa 20.3.0 could be cleared for release.

The brief announcement was just posted on Mesa-dev , so look for Mesa 2

Intel IWD 1.10 With DHCP v6 Support

Phoronix | Nov. 30, 2020, 1:21 p.m. | Original

Version 1.10 of Intel's IWD "iNet Wireless Daemon" has been released as the increasingly useful alternative to the likes of WPA_Supplicant for Linux systems.

Intel's open-source wireless daemon for Linux systems continues adding in more features and improvements. While it started out with a focus on minimalism and embedded use-cases, IWD is being evaluated for possible use on Ubuntu among other Linux distributions. With IWD 1.10 the highlights include:

Add support for DHCP v6 configuration.

Western Digital WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD Linux Performance

Phoronix | Nov. 30, 2020, 11:36 a.m. | Original

This month Western Digital introduced the WD_BLACK SN850 as the latest PCI Express 4.0 solid-state drive hitting the market. The WD_BLACK SN850 is a surprisingly strong performer if looking to upgrade to PCIe 4.0 solid-state storage, competing with the fastest of the consumer drives currently available.

The WD_BLACK SN850 makes use of Western Digital's G2 controller and 96L TLC NAND flash memory. The 1TB drive being tested

PAPPL 1.0 RC1 Released With A Goal To Replace CUPS Printer Drivers

Phoronix | Nov. 30, 2020, 9:28 a.m. | Original

CUPS printing system founder Michael Sweet who left Apple last year and that left CUPS in a stagnate position (as of writing, still no commits to their Git repository since April) while Sweet continues pushing ahead with his new and modern "PAPPL" effort.

PAPPL is the printer application framework being worked on by Michael Sweet over the past year for developing CUPS Printer Applications as a replacement to the conventional CUPS printer drivers. PAPPL supports JPEG / PNG / PWG Raster / Apple Raster / raw printing to printers via USB or network

Qt 6.0's 3D Renderer Is Much Improved But More Work Remains

Phoronix | Nov. 30, 2020, 9:13 a.m. | Original

With Qt 6.0 due to be released in December, Qt-minded consulting firm KDAB has published a blog post outlining the extensive 3D renderer improvements made for this big toolkit update. While Qt6's 3D rendering abilities are much improved, there still is further work ahead.

The Qt 3D renderer is much improved with Qt6 and now features good support for not only OpenGL but also the likes of Direct3D and Vulkan via the RHI (Rendering Hardware Interface) abstraction layer that has come

RADV Vulkan Driver Enables NGG For AMD VanGogh APUs

Phoronix | Nov. 30, 2020, 8 a.m. | Original

Up to now the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" has only enabled Next-Gen Geometry (NGG) support by default for discrete graphics cards. But now that requirement is lifted for supporting NGG on forthcoming GFX10.3 (RDNA 2) APUs.

The forthcoming and very exciting VanGogh APUs will now see NGG enabled when running on the RADV Vulkan driver, similar to a previous change made for the RadeonSI Gallium3D OpenGL driver.

This change was made by Valve's Samuel Pitoiset as "according to

GhostBSD 20.11.28 Released With Improved Steam On Linux Performance

Phoronix | Nov. 30, 2020, 6:39 a.m. | Original

GhostBSD 20.11.28 is out as the latest version of this desktop-focused BSD operating system based on FreeBSD.

Notable to GhostBSD 20.11.28 are fixes to the "Linuxulator" support from FreeBSD that allows for running Linux binaries on BSD. With the fixes in this release there should be better performance for running the Linux build of Steam. That should help in allowing more Linux games to run atop GhostBSD 20.11.28. I'll

GNOME Circle Officially Announced For Letting More Apps/Libraries "Join GNOME"

Phoronix | Nov. 30, 2020, 6:19 a.m. | Original

GNOME Circle was talked about earlier this month at the Linux App Summit 2020 while now it's been officially announced.

GNOME Circle is effectively lowering the barrier for allowing new applications and libraries to become part of the GNOME project. Here is how it's summed up in today's announcement:

In the past, to be a part of the GNOME project, development projects needed to be hosted on GNOME infrastructure and follow GNOME’s development rules. This created a barrier to entry for many developers

Menu