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Oracle Linux 8 U3 Released With Better NVDIMM Support, Latest RHEL8 Work

Phoronix | Nov. 13, 2020, 9:06 a.m. | Original

Oracle has released Oracle Linux 8 Update 3 as the newest version of their RHEL8-based operating system.

Oracle Linux 8 Update 3 is based off the recent Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 and thus sharing many of the same changes. RHEL 8.3 upstream brings TSX being disabled by default for Intel CPUs to reduce mitigation overhead, various network driver additions, a number of new module streams, installer updates, USBGuard integration work continuing, and other tech preview features catering to their enterprise Linux customers.

Oracle Linux

Linux VirtIO Memory Prepares For "Big Block Mode"

Phoronix | Nov. 13, 2020, 6:04 a.m. | Original

Red Hat engineers are working on a "big block mode" for the VirtIO-MEM code and could land for the Linux 5.11 cycle.

Right now the virtio-mem driver only supports device block sizes that max out at the size of a single Linux memory block. The "Big Block Mode" addresses that and allows any device block size for any Linux virtual machine.

Big Block Mode is also important for Red Hat's work on VFIO support in QEMU. Ultimately this virtio-mem work allows

Mesa 21.0 RadeonSI Merges Buffer Modifier Support

Phoronix | Nov. 13, 2020, 5:45 a.m. | Original

The long-standing patches by Bas Nieuwenhuizen on implementing DMA-BUF modifier support for the RadeonSI code within Mesa has now been merged for next quarter's Mesa 21.0 feature release.

With Linux 5.11 bringing the buffer modifier support on the kernel side for GFX9/Vega and newer, the code merged today into Mesa 21.0 enables the user-space API and makes use of the modifier capabilities within RadeonSI Gallium3D for the recent AMD Radeon graphics cards. This follows Intel

New i10 I/O Scheduler Proposed For Linux To Optimize Batching

Phoronix | Nov. 13, 2020, 3:14 a.m. | Original

A new Linux I/O scheduler has been proposed that is optimized for batching such as for MMC and TCP-based/remote storage.

The "i10" scheduler is the proposal for this new Linux I/O solution to amortize the remote access latency while increasing I/O throughput.

The i10 I/O scheduler proposal sent out by Rachit Agarwal explains that it " performs batching per hctx in terms of #requests, #bytes, and timeouts (at microseconds granularity). i10

Intel

Linux 5.10 Adds Intel Alder Lake DPTF Support - Still A Thorn For Open-Source

Phoronix | Nov. 13, 2020, midnight | Original

A late notable change for the Linux 5.10 kernel that was merged today as a "fix" is DPTF support for Intel Alder Lake hardware.

Intel's Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework (DPTF) has been common to Intel ultrabooks for a few years as their power/thermal solution for managing fan noise, overheating, and other performance-related problems. But for Linux users DPTF has been a mess and making full use of Intel DPTF on Linux has required binary bits -- including a binary-only

OpenZFS 2.0-RC6 Released With More Fixes For ZFS On Linux / FreeBSD

Phoronix | Nov. 12, 2020, 8:33 p.m. | Original

Just one week after OpenZFS 2.0-RC5 , a sixth release candidate is now available for this open-source ZFS file-system implementation currently geared for Linux and FreeBSD systems.

OpenZFS 2.0 final should be out this quarter with multiple performance improvements, mainline FreeBSD support, Zstd compression, new features, and much more . OpenZFS 2.0-RC6 is coming just one week after the previous RC in what is looking like nearing the finish line for this big annual OpenZFS feature release.

OpenZFS

Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R6U1 Prepares For AMD Milan, Adds WireGuard

Phoronix | Nov. 12, 2020, 1:23 p.m. | Original

After announcing Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6 back in March as their modified kernel based currently on the Linux 5.4 source tree while adding and back-porting extra features, UEK R6U1 was released today as their first major update to this kernel that can be found on the likes of Oracle Linux and powering the Oracle Cloud.

Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6 Update 1 remains based on the Linux 5.4 code-base but with plenty of back-porting and extra patches added in. UEK6 is an alternative to

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Linux Performance

Phoronix | Nov. 12, 2020, 10:30 a.m. | Original

Over the past week we have looked at the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X/5950X Linux performance as well as that of the lower-end -- but still very powerful -- Ryzen 5 5600X . Today we are striking in the middle in looking at the last Zen 3 CPU model for the moment: the Ryzen 7 5800X. The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X is a $449 USD processor that is packing eight

Debian 11 Picks Its Default Theme

Phoronix | Nov. 12, 2020, 8:39 a.m. | Original

For those wondering the outcome of last month's Debian 11 "Bullseye" artwork voting , a new default theme for this 2021 GNU/Linux distribution release has been decided.

Debian today announced that the winning theme that will be the default Debian 11 desktop artwork is "Homeworld".

TTM Multihop + Intel Keem Bay Display Support Queued For Linux 5.11

Phoronix | Nov. 12, 2020, 6:26 a.m. | Original

The Translation Table Maps (TTM) video memory management code used within the Linux kernel by DRM drivers such as Nouveau and Radeon/AMDGPU is seeing some improvements with the forthcoming Linux 5.11 kernel cycle.

Covered last week was new TTM allocator code being merged to DRM-Next ahead of December's Linux 5.11 merge window. That new TTM page allocator code can yield 3~5x faster page allocations though it's looking like the real-world impact will be minimal at least from

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