Kernel: LVFS, Next Linux, and Graphics

• LVFS Activity Going Wild Ahead Of New Security Disclosure Requiring Firmware Update - Phoronix

  The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) that integrates with Fwupd for delivering firmware updates primarily to Linux users is surging with around three times the normal traffic volume. Unfortunately, this boost in traffic appears to be due to vendor(s) releasing new system firmware updates ahead of disclosing a presumptive security issue.

• Folio Improvements For Linux 5.17, Large Folio Patches Posted - Phoronix

  Back in November memory folios were merged into Linux 5.16 as a fundamental change to the memory management code. Now for Linux 5.17 there are improvements for folios merged and then out likely for Linux 5.18 is introducing the notion of large folios. Linux's memory folios is designed to let file-systems and the page cache manage memory in chunks larger than the default page size. With Linux 5.16 the core memory management and page cache changes landed for supporting folios. Most benchmarks of folios put the performance benefit in the 0~10% region.

• Some Older AMD Systems Can Boot Faster On Linux 5.17+ - Phoronix

  A change merged overnight with the libata subsystem updates for Linux 5.17 means that some older AMD hardware will be able to boot quicker by avoiding an otherwise mandated sleep period. Merged this morning were the ATA subsystem updates for Linux 5.17. Usually the ATA changes don't amount to many noteworthy changes but "Add support for AMD A85 FCH (Hudson D4) AHCI adapters" got my attention... Yeah, the chipset from the early AMD "Fusion" APU days.

• AMD Radeon Open-Source OpenGL Driver Expands Its Sparse Texture Capabilities - Phoronix

  At the end of last year AMD introduced OpenGL sparse texture support into its RadeonSI Gallium3D driver. This functionality for Vega GPUs and newer flipped on ARB_sparse_texture support while now with the very latest Mesa 22.0-devel code ARB_sparse_texture2 is now flipped on too. ARB_sparse_texture2 updates OpenGL's sparse texture support with further additions by NVIDIA. ARB_sparse_texture2 adds new built-in GLSL texture lookup functions, changes the behavior around reads from uncommitted texture memory, specifies standard virtual page sizes for internal formats used by sparse textures, and support for creating sparse multi-sample and multi-sample array textures.

• NVIDIA CUDA 11.6 Brings Convenient "-arch=native", Defaults To New "GSP" Driver Mode - Phoronix

  NVIDIA has released CUDA 11.6 as the latest version of their widely used but proprietary GPU compute stack. With CUDA 11.6 there are some good improvements and new features in store. CUDA 11.6 has numerous changes for advancing the NVIDIA compute stack including the convenient "-arch=native" compiler option (similar to "-march=native" with classic system code compilers), beginning to make use of the GPU System Processor driver code path by default on capable hardware, various performance optimizations, and other updates.

New Releases of Absolute64 and Parted Magic

• Absolute64-20220117 released

  Based on Slackware64-current. After the 3rd release candidate by Slackware, Absoute has ditched spacefm/udevil -- switching to qtfm/udisks2 (still no gvfs). Spacefm seems to have been abandoned and I was beginning to have issues with devil.

• Parted Magic 2022_01_18 News

  This version of Parted Magic updates to Linux 5.16.1 and fixes a few minor problems with the Secure Erase and NVME Secure Erase programs. Manufacturers are starting to get a bit carried away with the length of names given to drives. The names are now limited to 15 characters, so the Secure Erase GUI should now fit well on everybody’s screen. If there is still any doubt to what drive is what, do a mouse over and the entire name will be shown in the tool tip.

Free Software Leftovers

• Padloc, The Open-source Password manager for teams and enterprise that works everywhere

  Padloc is a dead-simple password manager app for users who want to get the job done without any distractions and clutter. Padloc is a free, open-source solution but also offers a web service that helps the user to sync and store their passwords and keys in an encrypted web vault for a fee. Users also can download and install the app on their machine and sync up to 50 passwords, credit cards info, and login credentials, with up to 2 connected devices. However, the project itself is an open-source project that is licensed under GPL-3.0 License, which means you can install its component and run your server.

• The Apache Software Foundation Announces Open Source data orchestration platform Apache® Hop™ as a Top-Level Project

  The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today Apache® Hop™ as a Top-Level Project (TLP). Apache Hop —the Hop Orchestration Platform— is a flexible, metadata-infused data orchestration, engineering, and integration platform. The project originated more than two decades ago as the Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) platform Kettle (Pentaho Data Integration), was refactored over several years, and entered the Apache Incubator in September 2020. "We are pleased to successfully adopt 'the Apache Way' and graduate from the Apache Incubator," said Bart Maertens, Vice President of Apache Hop. "Apache Hop enables people of all skill levels to build powerful and scalable data solutions without the need to write code. As an Apache Top-Level Project, Hop is developed and used by people across the globe. Hop's full project life cycle support helps these data teams to successfully build, test and run their projects in ways that would otherwise be hard or impossible to do."

• QtPass is a free, open-source multiplatform Password manager

  QtPass is an open-source, free password manager GUI for the standard Unix password manager "pass" application. The "pass" password manager is a command-line open-source feature-rich application that follows Unix's philosophy.

• Entrepreneurship for Engineers: Side Business or Full Time?

  Around this time of year people often wonder about their career trajectories and think about goals for the new year. If you’re the creator and/or maintainer of an open source project, you might also be wondering if now is the time to make your part-time open source project a full-time job or continue working on it in your spare time. Hearing from other entrepreneurs can be useful in making this kind of decision, but when asked how to determine if something is ripe to go from side hustle to business, the entrepreneurs I spoke with often responded with a version of, “I wish I knew.” That’s because whether or not an open source project might be monetizable is one question, whereas whether or not a particular person is going to be able to pull off that shift — and whether that is the best career move at the time, for that person — is another entirely.

• Another use for the syslog-ng elasticsearch-http destination: Zinc

  There is a new drop-in replacement for Elasticsearch, at least if you don’t mind the limitations and the alpha status. However, it definitely lives up to the promise that it provides an Elasticsearch-compatible API for data ingestion. I tested it with the elasticsearch-http() destination of syslog-ng, and it worked perfectly after I modified the URL in the configuration example I found. So, what is Zinc? It is a search engine written in Go that provides an Elasticsearch-compatible API for data ingestion. You cannot use Kibana with it, only its own web interface. If you are not into graphs and dashboards, and want to search text messages, then it is perfect. The application itself is a single binary and it does not have any external dependencies. It is lightweight and easy to configure, as practically there are no configuration options at all. Note: Zinc is still in alpha state. There are no guarantees that later versions will be compatible at any level. Error messages can sometimes be cryptic and you might run into unexpected behavior.