Graphics: OpenGL, Intel and Zink
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Even in 2021 longtime open-source AMD Mesa driver developer Marek Olšák isn't done optimizing OpenGL for delivering the best possible performance with the Radeon graphics driver. Marek's latest work includes more OpenGL threading enhancements and other work seemingly targeted at SPECViewPerf workloads.
Marek has spent the past several weeks working to remove the last OpenGL threading synchronization stalls that happen with SPECViewPerf 13. As part of this latest pull request he added support to glthread for executing display lists asynchronously. Plus there are some other OpenGL code improvements too.
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New feature material for Linux 5.12 continues getting ready ahead of the merge window opening in February to formally kick off the cycle.
On top of the prior Intel graphics driver improvements queued up in recent weeks to DRM-Next, another batch of Intel updates were sent out this week.
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Going back to last summer there have been patches experimentally taking Zink as far as OpenGL 4.6 albeit it's been a lengthy process getting all of the relevant patches upstreamed. Additionally, some patches have required reworking or proper adjustments after going through the conformance test suite to ensure they are up to scratch for merging. Thanks to that ongoing effort by Mike Blumenkrantz working under contract for Valve and the work by Collabora developers, it was a quick jump this month from seeing OpenGL 4.1 to OpenGL 4.2 in mainline.
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I meant to blog a couple times this week, but I kept getting sidetracked by various matters. Here’s a very brief recap on what’s happened in zinkland over the past week.
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With the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan implementation within Mesa on a nice upward trajectory with most recently now having the backing of a Valve contract developer and a focus on getting the backlog of patches to this Gallium3D code upstreamed, here are some fresh benchmarks looking at where the performance currently stands when using Zink atop the RADV Vulkan driver compared to using the native RadeonSI driver with this round of testing from a Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card.
| Android Leftovers
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Zink OpenGL-On-Vulkan vs. RadeonSI OpenGL Performance As Of January 2021
With the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan implementation within Mesa on a nice upward trajectory with most recently now having the backing of a Valve contract developer and a focus on getting the backlog of patches to this Gallium3D code upstreamed, here are some fresh benchmarks looking at where the performance currently stands when using Zink atop the RADV Vulkan driver compared to using the native RadeonSI driver with this round of testing from a Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card.
| Mozilla Leftovers
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We follow a strict release process tied to the release cycle of Firefox. You can discover our CSS interventions and JavaScript Interventions. The calendar for the upcoming releases is defined in advance.
Before each release cycle for site interventions, the Softvision Webcompat team (Oana and Cipri) makes sure to test the site without the patch to discover if the site intervention is still necessary. This takes time and requires a lot of manual work. Time that could be used for more introspective work.
To activate deactivate site interventions, you can play with extensions.webcompat.perform_injections in about:config.
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Firefox Monthly Active Users (MAU): Measures the number of Firefox Desktop clients active in the past 28 days. (Source: Firefox Public Data Report)
With over 200 million people using our web browser every month, Firefox has arguably achieved classic definitions of scale. However, as researchers, we also know that the reasons behind product choice and usage are often more complex than numbers alone can illustrate.
In early 2019, our Data Science team began to review our current in-product metrics in an effort to better understand how to interpret our usage numbers and expose any gaps. Firefox User Researcher Jennifer Davidson (and co-author) consulted on that project, which ultimately found that we had very limited qualitative understanding of Firefox usage numbers. Around the same time, a cross-functional team, including Firefox User Researcher Gemma Petrie (and co-author), began an internal research project to gain a top-down view of value by asking our senior leaders how they would define the value of our products. Perhaps unsurprisingly in such a large organization, there were a wide variety of responses.
In late 2019, Gemma and Jennifer proposed a study to align these efforts and explore the gaps we were observing. We knew it was time to get an “outside in” perspective to inform our internal narrative, and ultimately help our organization make better product decisions. At the heart of this research was a fundamental question: How do people describe the value they get out of Firefox? We hypothesized that by better understanding how people describe the value they get out of Firefox, we would be able to better inform how to measure our success as a company and encourage our leaders to complement traditional measures of scale with more human-centered metrics.
Some of you may be thinking, “That is a very fundamental question for such an established product! Why don’t you already know the answer to it?” There are two primary reasons why this is a difficult question for our Firefox researchers to study. First, commonplace products like a web browser present unique challenges. The role of a web browser is almost akin to a utility–it is so deeply domesticated into people’s lives, that they may use Firefox every day without thinking much about it (Haddon 2006). A second unique challenge for Mozilla is that the usage data to understand how people use Firefox is often nonexistent. Mozilla practices very limited data collection. Our data practices are aligned with our mission and we do not collect information about the content people visit on the web (Mozilla 2020b, Mozilla 2020c, Mozilla 2020d). Often, user research is the only opportunity our organization has to understand the content people seek out and their workflows within the browser.
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I started doing this about 10 years ago when I worked at Opera. I don’t know if it was a widely used convention, or I just copied it off someone, but it’s pretty good, IMHO.
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There are three types of web: the surface web, the deep web, and the dark web. All that you can access using your Google browser is known as the surface web - it is visible to one and all. The deep web is all information that is under lock and key. In other words, we don’t have access to it. The dark web, on the other hand, is a creepy and secret underworld where access is denied using normal browsers. But with special tools handy and ready, users can buy almost anything - from guns to atom bombs - with total anonymity. In order to access the dark web, we need a special browser capable of opening and displaying dot onion links. This is where the Tor browser comes in.
Typically, when we surf the web, we leave digital footprints everywhere in the form of our IP address. We allow ourselves to be tracked and monitored by everyone out there. This is because our typical browsers allow it. Tor, on the other hand, does not allow tracking. It is a specialized browser whose first priority is anonymity.
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Latest PCLinuxOS Package Updates
Opera Browser updated to 70.0.3728.154
Signal-desktop updated to 1.35.1
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Shotcut updated to 20.09.13
Zoom updated to 5.2.458699.0906
Basilisk browser updated to 2020.09.11
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Firefox updated to 81.0
FreeFileSync updated to 11.1
Bitwarden updated to 1.22.1
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Zoom updated to 5.3.465578.0920
Google Chrome updated to 85.0.4183.121
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Calibre updated to 5.0.1
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Stellarium updated to 0.20.3
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Firefox browser updated to 81.0.1
Waterfox browser updated to 2020.09
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balena-etcher-electron updated to 1.5.99
Gimp image editor updated to 2.10.22
Telegram desktop updated to 2.4.2
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Freetube updated to 0.8.0
Mozilla Thunderbird updated to 78.3.2
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Firefox browser updated to 81.0.2
Zoom updated to 5.3.472687.1012
Web Browser updates - PCLinuxOS
Web Browser updates » PCLinuxOS
Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Firefox updated in PCLOS
Mozilla Thunderbird updated to 78.3.3 » PCLinuxOS
Mozilla Firefox updated to 82.0 » PCLinuxOS
Extra! Extra! KDE Plasma updated to 5.20.1
Extra! Extra! KDE Plasma updated to 5.20.1
Mozilla Firefox updated to 82.0.1
Mozilla Firefox updated to 82.0.1 » PCLinuxOS
Palemoon Browser (and KDE) updated to 28.15.0 in PCLOS
Palemoon Browser updated to 28.15.0 » PCLinuxOS
Bonus! KDE Plasma desktop updated to 5.20.2 » PCLinuxOS
Kodi media player updated to 18.9
Kodi media player updated to 18.9 » PCLinuxOS
Latest updates
Zoom updated to 5.4.53350.1027 » PCLinuxOS
Opera Browser updated to 72.0.3815.186 » PCLinuxOS
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Vivaldi and Flashpeak
Vivaldi browser updated to 3.4.2066.90 » PCLinuxOS
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Chrome Browser updated to 86.0.4240.183
Chrome Browser updated to 86.0.4240.183 » PCLinuxOS
Mozilla Thunderbird updated to 78.4.1
Mozilla Thunderbird updated to 78.4.1
Seamonkey Browser Suite updated to 2.53.5
Seamonkey Browser Suite updated to 2.53.5
PCLinuxOS upgrades Calibre and Freetube
Calibre updated to 5.5.0 » PCLinuxOS
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Google Chrome Browser updated to 87.0.4280.66
Google Chrome Browser updated to 87.0.4280.66
PCLinuxOS Gets Latest Thunderbird and Brave Browser
Thunderbird email client updated to 78.5.0 » PCLinuxOS
Brave Browser updated to 1.17.70 » PCLinuxOS
Chromium and Sigil Editor
Chromium Browser updated to 87.0.4280.66
Sigil Editor updated to 1.4.1
A couple more updates
Rust updated to 1.48.0 » PCLinuxOS
Zoom Meeting updated to 5.4.54779.1115 » PCLinuxOS
Latest updates
Ardour updated to 6.5.0 » PCLinuxOS
Ardour updated to 6.5.0 » PCLinuxOS
Calibre updated to 5.6.0 » PCLinuxOS
Songkong updated to 6.11 » PCLinuxOS
Latest updates in PCLinuxOS
Basilisk brower updated to 2020.11.25 » PCLinuxOS
Dropbox updated to 110.4.458 » PCLinuxOS
Interlink Mail client updated to 52.9.7634 » PCLinuxOS
Thunderbird email updated to 78.5.1
Thunderbird email updated to 78.5.1 » PCLinuxOS
PCLinuxOS updates proprietary blobs
Zoom Client updated to 5.4.56259.1207 » PCLinuxOS
Vivaldi browser updated to 3.5.2115.73
Opera Browser updated to 73.0.3856.257 » PCLinuxOS
Mozilla Thunderbird and Firefox updated in PCLinuxOS
Mozilla Thunderbird updated to 78.6.0 » PCLinuxOS
Mozilla Firefox updated to 84.0 » PCLinuxOS
Brave Browser and Min Browser in PCLinuxOS
Brave Browser updated to 1.18.75 » PCLinuxOS
Min Browser updated to 1.17.3 » PCLinuxOS
Bluemail email client updated to 1.1.54
Bluemail email client updated to 1.1.54
Latest in PCLOS
Vivaldi browser updated to 3.5.2115.87 » PCLinuxOS
Filezilla updated to 3.52.0.5 » PCLinuxOS
Filezilla updated to 3.52.0.5 » PCLinuxOS
Google Chrome browser updated to 87.0.4280.141 » PCLinuxOS
Evolution updated to 3.38.3 » PCLinuxOS
Calibre updated to 5.9.0 in PCLinuxOS
Calibre updated to 5.9.0
Thunderbird [in PCLinuxOS] updated [to] 78.6.1
Thunderbird [in PCLinuxOS] updated [to] 78.6.1
Zoom updated to 5.4.57862.0110
Zoom updated to 5.4.57862.0110 » PCLinuxOS
Librewolf and Inkscape updated in PCLinuxOS
Librewolf updated to 84.0.2 » PCLinuxOS
Inkscape updated to 1.0.2 » PCLinuxOS
Flashpeak Slimjet in PCLinuxOS
Flashpeak Slimjet browser updated to 29.0.1.0 » PCLinuxOS
PCLinuxOS Latest
Seamonkey updated to 2.53.6
Google Chrome updated to 88.0.4324.96
Calibre updated to 5.10.0