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Linux Looks To Change The Default For Some Of Its Spectre Mitigations

Phoronix | Nov. 5, 2020, 3:55 a.m. | Original

Upstream Linux kernel developers are looking at changing some of their Spectre mitigation defaults around what's applied to SECCOMP threads by default in part due to the performance hit as well as other reasons.

For mitigating Spectre Variant Two and Spectre Variant Four (Speculative Store Bypass Disable - SSBD), SECCOMP threads see the mitigation by default while other threads rely on per-thread controls via prctl. Linux kernel developers from the likes of Red Hat and Google are now looking at not applying the mitigations by default to SECCOMP threads for the

More Changes Begin Lining Up For Fedora 34

Phoronix | Nov. 5, 2020, 12:09 a.m. | Original

Fedora 33 was just released at the end of October but already a number of change proposals are building up for Fedora 34 due out next spring.

Fedora 34 has already seen some proposals around security enhancements, a 64-bit ARM KDE Plasma desktop spin, further compressing the install media, switching the KDE spin to using Wayland by default, and more. Over the past day there have been some additional change proposals published.

These latest proposals still need to clear approval from the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee

AMD Sends In Green Sardine Support For Linux 5.10, Hawaii BACO Reset

Phoronix | Nov. 4, 2020, 8:33 p.m. | Original

While the Linux 5.10 merge window passed a week and a half ago, similar to the Navi Blockchain SKU being added as a "fix" , the Green Sardine enablement is also being submitted as a fix for this current kernel version.

At the start of October AMD sent out Linux driver bits for Green Sardine as a forthcoming APU platform. The Green Sardine hardware enablement from the graphics perspective basically has the AMDGPU driver follow the Renoir/Vega code paths but with different firmware files and other minor alterations. Green

AMD Adds Secure Video Playback To Their Open-Source Linux Driver

Phoronix | Nov. 4, 2020, 12:46 p.m. | Original

In addition to Mesa 20.3 seeing RadeonSI support for EGL protected surfaces backed by the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver with Trusted Memory Zone support, AMD's graphics driver developers have now added support for secure/protected video acceleration playback to their Mesa driver code.

To the Gallium3D video acceleration state tracker is now support for "secure" video playback with AMD's Gallium3D driver (RadeonSI) for the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) interface -- the predominant video acceleration interface on Linux

LXQt 0.16 Released For Lightweight Qt Linux Desktop

Phoronix | Nov. 4, 2020, 10 a.m. | Original

If the recent releases of KDE Plasma 5.20 and GNOME 3.38 didn't fulfill your wishes for a dream Linux desktop and are looking for something lightweight, LXQt 0.16 is out today.

LXQt is the lightweight desktop environment that was born out of the merging of the LXDE and Razor-qt projects several years ago. LXQt 0.16 is the new release and coming six months after their prior release.

There aren't many big changes with LXQt 0.16

C++20 Modules Compiler Code Under Review, Could Still Land For GCC 11

Phoronix | Nov. 4, 2020, 9:07 a.m. | Original

With C++20 one of the major features added is that of modules as a modern alternative to that of conventional C++ header files for packages. The C++20 modules code for the GNU Compiler Collection that has been in the works for several years is now under review and could potentially still land for the GCC 11 release next year.

C++20 modules should allow for better isolation, avoiding the abundance of header files on systems, better structure code, and also possible

Dell Adding Hardware Privacy Driver For Linux

Phoronix | Nov. 4, 2020, 7:30 a.m. | Original

Beginning in Dell's 2021 laptop models they are providing hardware-based "privacy buttons" to disable microphone and camera support. In preparations for more Dell laptops coming to market with these buttons, a Dell privacy driver is being prepared for the Linux kernel.

These new Dell privacy buttons are basically hardware kill switches for the microphone and web camera video stream. The Dell privacy driver sent out on Tuesday for the Linux kernel is about manipulating the relevant LEDs and tracking the status of the hardware-based controls

Qt 6.0's Shiny New Features For Qt Quick 3D

Phoronix | Nov. 4, 2020, 6 a.m. | Original

One of the areas of the Qt 6.0 toolkit with the greatest number of improvements is on the Qt Quick 3D front.

Qt Quick 3D supports a wide range of new features and improvements for this toolkit component that provides a high-level 3D API for user interfaces as well as a growing number of other possible 3D use-cases. Some of the Qt Quick 3D improvements to find in Qt 6.0 include:

- Qt Quick 3D supports rendering to OpenGL 3.x,

Intel's Initial Graphics Updates For Linux 5.11: More DG1, Integer Scaling, Async Flips

Phoronix | Nov. 4, 2020, 3:46 a.m. | Original

There's still more than one month to go until the Linux 5.11 merge window kicks off but Intel open-source developers have already submitted their initial batch of kernel graphics driver updates to DRM-Next.

For this next kernel cycle that will also mark being the first stable Linux kernel update of 2021, Intel has a lot of exciting open-source graphics updates. There continues to be a lot of enablement work around their discrete graphics efforts (currently, DG1), integer scaling

FFmpeg Lands VA-API AV1 Decode Support Led By Intel

Phoronix | Nov. 4, 2020, 2 a.m. | Original

With Intel Gen12 Xe-LP / Tiger Lake supporting AV1 accelerated decoding , Intel has provided this support via their open-source media stack on Linux that is then exposed via the Video Acceleration API (VA-API). Intel has now landed their patches for supporting VA-API AV1 decode with FFmpeg .

The FFmpeg patch we talked about back in September has now been merged for allowing AV1 decode over the VA-API interface with this widely-used multimedia library.

The Intel-contributed work

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