Wine and Games for GNU/Linux

• Wine 3.13 is out as well as DXVK 0.63 for D3D11 with Vulkan

  First of all the latest Wine development release is out with Wine 3.13 and on top of that DXVK for Vulkan-based D3D11 in Wine also release version 0.63.

• Feral's GameMode 1.2 Released For Optimizing Linux Gaming

  For what just started out as a tool to ensure you are using the "performance" frequency scaling governor when running Linux games, Feral's open-source GameMode system tool has slowly been picking up some extra functionality. Out this weekend is Feral GameMode 1.2 as the newest release. GameMode 1.2 adds configuration options about the default and desired governors, now supports soft real-time scheduling on kernels with SCHED_ISO support and will then use renice to boost games to a higher priority, the GameMode service is now D-Bus activated than needing to be explicitly enabled by systemd, and the GameMode libraries are now properly versioned.

• Stardew Valley multiplayer just got a PC release date

  Since the moment Stardew Valley launched back in 2016, multiplayer has been one of the most anticipated additions to the games. After a period of beta testing, it’s nearly ready to roll out on PC, Mac, and Linux. While it probably isn’t going to look a lot different from the beta that’s currently available, this is exciting news for more reasons than one.

• Multiplayer is coming to ‘Stardew Valley’ on PC, Mac and Linux

  According to a tweet from Eric Barone (@ConcernedApe), the sole developer behind Stardew Valley, the feature is coming to the lighthearted farming game on August 1st. Along with the release date, the game’s developer also released a new trailer for the feature (see it above).

• 'Stardew Valley' multiplayer arrives on PC, Mac and Linux August 1st

Android Leftovers

• For Android Users, Europe's Google Ruling Leaves Unanswered Questions

• Mobile apps: America's favorite fast-food apps for Android: A Foolish Take

• Android Circuit: New Galaxy S10 Leaks, Expensive Note 9 Revealed, Google's Massive Pixel 2 Mistake

• How To Promote Your Android App Continuously

• Google Fuchsia OS development hits overdrive, could replace Android in 5 years

Jonathan Dieter: Small file performance on distributed filesystems - Round 2

Last year, I ran some benchmarks on the GlusterFS, CephFS and LizardFS distributed filesystems, with some interesting results. I had a request to redo the test after a LizardFS RC was released with a FUSE3 client, since it is supposed to give better small file performance. I did have a request last time to include RozoFS, but, after a brief glance at the documentation, it looks like it requires a minimum of four servers, and I only had three available. I also looked at OrangeFS (originally PVFS2), but it doesn’t seem to provide replication, and, in preliminary testing, it was over ten times slower than the alternatives. NFS was tested and its results are included as a baseline. I once again used compilebench, which was designed to emulate real-life disk usage by creating a kernel tree, reading all the files in the tree, simulating a compile of the tree, running make clean, and finally deleting the tree. The test was much the same as last time, but with one important difference. Last time, the clients were running on the same machines that were running the servers. LizardFS benefited hugely from this as it has a “prefer local chunkserver” feature that will skip the network completely if there’s a copy on the local server. This time around, the clients were run on completely separate machines from the servers, which removed that advantage for LizardFS, but which I believe is a better reflection on how distributed filesystems are generally used. I would like to quickly note that there was very little speed difference between LizardFS’s FUSE2 and FUSE3 clients. The numbers included are from the FUSE3 client, but they only differed by a few percentage points from the FUSE2 client.

GNOME 3.30 Desktop Environment to Enter Beta on August 1, GNOME 3.29.4 Is Out

With a two-day delay, the GNOME Project through Javier Jardón announced today the release of the fourth and last development snapshot of the GNOME 3.30 desktop environment before it enters beta testing next month, GNOME 3.29.4, which continues to add improvements to various of GNOME's core components and applications. However, due to the summer vacation and the GUADEC conference, GNOME 3.29.4 isn't a major snapshot as many would have expected. It only adds some minor changes and bug fixes to a handful of components, including GNOME Shell, Mutter, Evolution, GNOME Photos, GNOME Builder, GNOME Online Accounts, Polari, Bijiben, Evince, Epiphany, Baobab, GNOME Control Center, and File Roller. Also: GNOME 3.29.4 Released As Another Step Towards GNOME 3.30