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With the maturity of the EXT4 file-system it’s not too often seeing any huge feature additions for this commonly used Linux file-system but there’s still the occasional wild performance optimization to uncover… With Linux 6.11 the EXT4 file-system can see upwards of a 20% performance boost in some scenarios.

Ted Ts’o sent out the EXT4 updates today for Linux 6.11.

He explained in that pull request: "Many cleanups and bug fixes in ext4, especially for the fast commit feature.

Up to 20% faster for fast devices using async direct I/O thanks to JBD2 optimizations.

Indeed the patch from Huawei’s Zhang Yi to speed up jbd2_transaction_committed() shows off some great improvements:

It’s great continuing to see EXT4 uncover new performance optimizations.

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Due to the ARM64 maintainer for the Linux kernel going on holiday, the ARM64 port updates have been submitted ahead of the opening of the Linux 6.11 merge window that will likely be on Monday or otherwise the following week depending upon if a 6.10-rc8 is warranted.

When it comes to the ARM64 (AArch64) changes for this next kernel version, there’s been a lot of work on virtual CPU hotplug handling so that it should now be properly working on ARM64 ACPI-enabled systems.

Another change with Linux 6.11 ARM64 is expanding the speculative SSBS workaround to more CPU cores.

Arm’s Speculative Store Bypass handling is now being extended for additional affected CPU cores of he A710, A720, X2, X3, X925, N2, and V2.

There are also ARM64 ACPI updates, GICv3 optimizations, perf updates for more hardware, and other smaller changes.

See this merge request for all the ARM64 feature patches slated for Linux 6.11.

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A change proposal has been filed by Red Hat engineer Miro Hrončok for retiring Python 2.7 within Fedora 41 and to drop packages still depending upon Python 2.

We do not wish to simply orphan the package, as we are afraid it would not receive proper care if taken by somebody else.

If there are potential maintainers interested in maintaining Python 2 in Fedora beyond Fedora 41, they can talk to us and demonstrate their ability and will to take care of Python 2 by joining the maintenance early.

Users who need to run their application in Python 2 should do so on a platform that offers support for it.

Developers who still need to test their software on Python 2 can use containers with older Fedora releases or unsupported CentOS/RHEL versions."

The F41 change proposal still needs the approval of the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo), but it will presumably proceed – well, assuming GIMP 3.0 finally releases this summer so as to not block the Python 2.7 removal.

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The DRM Panic handler in Linux 6.10 that is used for presenting a visual error message in case of kernel panics and similar when CONFIG_VT is disabled continues seeing new features.

With Linux 6.11, the DRM Panic display can now handle monochrome logos.

With the code in Linux 6.10 when DRM Panic is triggered, an ASCII art version of Linux’s mascot, Tux the penguin, is rendered as part of the display.

If ASCII art on error messages doesn’t satisfy your tastes in 2024+, the DRM Panic code will be able to support a monochrome graphical logo that leverages the Linux kernel’s boot-up logo support.

This monochrome logo support in the DRM Panic handler was sent out as part of this week’s drm-misc-next pull request ahead of the Linux 6.11 merge window in July.

This week’s drm-misc-next material also includes TTM memory management improvements, various fixes to the smaller Direct Rendering Manager drivers, and also the previously talked about monochrome TV support for the Raspberry Pi.

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Last week the GNOME 47 development code saw Wayland DRM lease protocol support for enhancing VR headset handling and separately was also accent color support for GNOME Shell.

Adding to the recent slew of changes landing for GNOME 47, the GNOME Shell and Mutter code can now be successfully compiled – optionally – without any X11 support or requiring any X11 build dependencies.

For those wanting to build a Wayland-only Linux desktop experience without carrying any aging X11 baggage, GNOME 47 will be able to optionally offer Wayland-only support without carrying X11/X.Org support.

That landed today along with this GNOME Shell merge request for being able to disable X11 support too.

In turn this closes a two year old issue tracker over making X11 dependencies optional on GNOME.

GNOME 47 is shaping up to be a very exciting desktop update due for release in September and will be found with the likes of Fedora 41 and Ubuntu 24.10.

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The Linux kernel community has sadly lost one of its longtime, prolific contributors to the wireless (WiFi) drivers.

His wife shared the news of Larry Finger’s passing this weekend on the linux-wireless mailing list in a brief statement.

Larry Finger began contributing originally to the Broadcom BCM43XX driver back in the day and over the years has contributed a lot to Linux WiFi drivers.

His more recent contributions had been around the RTW88, RTW89, R8188EU, R8712, RTLWIFI, B43 and other Linux networking drivers.

In part to his contributions, the Linux wireless hardware support has come a long way over the past two decades…

Longtime Linux users will certainly remember the days of struggling with WiFi support, resorting to NDISWrapper for using Windows WiFi drivers on Linux, and other headaches compared to today’s largely trouble-free wireless hardware support.

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With users being bitten in recent days by this behavior when they were just expecting tmp files to be removed, systemd 256.1 is now available and does have a change to avoid inadvertently deleting your all-important home directory.

Thus those trying to do system maintenance without reading the man page could find their /home data deleted.

Initially the bug report was shot down by systemd developer Luca Boccassi of Microsoft with: So an option that is literally documented as saying “all files and directories created by a tmpfiles.d/ entry will be deleted”, that you knew nothing about, sounded like a “good idea”?

Maybe don’t just run random commands that you know nothing about, while ignoring what the documentation tells you?

Just a thought eh Ultimately though after much discussion the past few days, systemd-tmpfiles behavior is now improved upon.

Merged yesterday was this patch that now makes systemd-tmpfiles accept a configuration file when running purge.

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Two new change proposals have been filed for enhancing the KDE offerings with this autumn’s Fedora 41 release.

First, there is a proposal to offer a new Fedora Spin using KDE Plasma Mobile.

Similarly, a Fedora Kinoite Mobile Bootable Container image is also proposed as part of that.

Some find success as well using KDE Plasma Mobile on 2-in-1 laptop devices too.

Those are the newest Fedora 41 change proposals for that feature release due out in October.

These changes still need to be approved by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) in the coming weeks.

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Two new change proposals have been filed for enhancing the KDE offerings with this autumn’s Fedora 41 release.

First, there is a proposal to offer a new Fedora Spin using KDE Plasma Mobile.

Similarly, a Fedora Kinoite Mobile Bootable Container image is also proposed as part of that.

Some find success as well using KDE Plasma Mobile on 2-in-1 laptop devices too.

Those are the newest Fedora 41 change proposals for that feature release due out in October.

These changes still need to be approved by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) in the coming weeks.

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The newly released FreeBSD 14.1 was delivering great out-of-the-box performance on this AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X 64-core / 128-thread workstation.

NetBSD 10.0 was much slower than the rest for the SQLite embedded database benchmark.

The packaged PHP on each operating system varies but in any event here is a look at the out-of-the-box performance.

FreeBSD 14.1 overall was the best BSD performer among the BSDs tested on this AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation from System76.

It was refreshing to see how well the new FreeBSD 14.1 was performing and competing with the likes of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and CentOS Stream 9.

Those wishing to see even more benchmarks form this Threadripper 7980X BSD/Linux comparison can do so via this result page.

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After being talked about for years of DRM panic handling and coming with a “Blue Screen of Death” solution for DRM/KMS drivers, Linux 6.10 is introducing a new DRM panic handler infrastructure for being able to display a message when a panic occurs.

With Linux 6.10 the initial DRM Panic code has landed as well as wiring up the DRM/KMS driver support for the SimpleDRM, MGAG200, IMX, and AST drivers.

For those curious what DRM Panic can look like in action, Red Hat engineer Javier Martinez Canillas shared a photo of the DRM Panic “Blue Screen of Death” in action.

A BeaglePlay single board computer was used and Javier posted to Mastodon of an example implementation:

It could be extended in the future with some operating systems having looked at QR codes for kernel error messages and other efforts for presenting more technical information while still being user-friendly.

On Linux 6.10+ with platforms having the DRM Panic driver support, this “Blue Screen of Death” functionality can be tested via a route such as echo c > /proc/sysrq-trigger.

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The #7955 bug report is over the S-Hoai Windows client displaying an application exception when clicking the “File” or “Projects” menu.

S-Hoai is a Windows application used in Germany by architects and building engineers/contractors for managing estimates and billing according to German laws.

This S-Hoai “Honorarordnung für Architekten und Ingenieure” software on at least older versions has been borked running under Wine with little activity in the bug report over the years.

But now in Wine Staging 9.11 is an OLEDB32 patch where mode can have multiple values as a string.

That will hopefully take care of the issue for S-Hoai and any other similar Windows software.

Separately, Wine Staging 9.11 carries an ODBCCP32 patch to correct the look-up of DSN before writing to registry.

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Intel Low Power Mode Daemon v0.0.4 has been released with “LPMD” being the open-source daemon for optimize active idle power for modern Core hybrid CPUs under Linux that sport a combination of the E and P cores.

The Intel LPMD selects the most power efficient CPUs based on the detected CPU topology or a user configuration file.

Then based on system utilization and other hints it will put the system into a low-power mode when applicable by engaging the most power efficient CPU cores and disabling the higher power/performance cores when not needed.

This Low Power Mode Daemon so far hasn’t been too commonly used by Linux distributions or popular with Intel Linux users, but alas still in its early days and only today crossing the v0.0.4 milestone.

With the support for multiple low-power states, Intel LPMD can define multiple states based on EPP / EPB / ITMT settings, IRQ migration, and task migration.

I’ve been meaning to run some Intel LPMD power/performance impact benchmarks and now with this new release is a great time to do so.

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The extensible scheduler “sched_ext” code has proven quite versatile for opening up better Linux gaming performance, more quickly prototyping new scheduler changes, Ubuntu/Canonical has been evaluating it for pursuing a more micro-kernel like design, and many other interesting approaches with it.

Torvalds feels the sched_ext code is ready enough and provides real value to the mainline Linux kernel.

This whole patchset was the major (private) discussion at last year’s kernel maintainer summit, and I don’t find any value in having the same discussion (whether off-list or as an actual event) at the upcoming maintainer summit one year later, so to make any kind of sane progress, my current plan is to merge this for 6.11.

I’ve never been a huge believer in trying to make everybody happy with code that is out of tree - we’re better off working together on it in-tree.

And using the “in order to accept this, some other thing has to be fixed first” argument doesn’t really work well either (and that has been discussed for over a decade at various maintainer summits).

So short of any last minute change of plans between now and mid-July when the Linux 6.11 merge window opens, looks for sched_ext in the next kernel cycle.

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Jeremy Soller who is an engineer at System76 and manages a side hustle of leading development on the open-source, Rust-written Redox OS has shared the latest look at this open-source operating system with the System76 COSMIC desktop applications.

Redox OS down to its micro-kernel is leveraging Rust and thus the COSMIC apps – also leveraging Rust – are a great fit for this open-source OS.

Here’s a look at Redox OS from a few years ago when I last gave it a shot, rather basic:

Now here’s the latest look at Redox OS that Solley posted to X with the caption "This is Redox OS, a Rust and micro-kernel based operating system that I created, running three COSMIC DE apps (with only Rust dependencies) that I authored.

Jeremy in follow-up comments also added that they still need to port DRM kernel graphics drivers to make gaming more viable and self-hosting is “very close”.

Nice job to those that continue to be involved in this from-scratch Rust-written open-source OS.

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Back in February Intel changed the Meteor Lake EPP from a value of 128 to 115 when operating in the default “balance_performance” mode but that turns out to not be entirely ideal.

The one-line patch put out today bumps it from 115 to 64 and is yielding nice gains in performance and power efficiency.

With the revised EPP value, the Intel Meteor Lake performance improved by 19% for the Speedometer web browser benchmark.

Meanwhile the Microsoft Teams video conference power consumption dropped by 35% with that EPP adjustment.

This patch provides that updated tuning magic for the Intel Meteor Lake SoCs with the P-State driver.

Hopefully the patches will be merged for Linux v6.11 if not being submitted early as a “fix” for the current 6.10 cycle…

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Microsoft has published its first tagged preview of the upcoming Azure Linux 3.0 operating system.

Azure Linux – formerly what was known as CBL-Mariner as their in-house Linux distribution used for purposes from Azure to WSL to Windows IoT – is preparing for a big v3.0 update.

On Wednesday the Azure Linux 3.0.20240524-3.0 preview release was published.

No formal release notes have yet to be posted for the Azure Linux 3.0 changes in full.

Those wanting to try out the preview release of Microsoft Azure Linux 3.0 can find the pre-release on GitHub.

Azure Linux 3.0 preview releasing on the Phoronix 20th birthday is a nice present… Microsoft maintaining their own Linux distribution certainly wasn’t on my bingo card or wildest imagination twenty years ago.

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Expressed last week was a “major issue” from the GNOME Foundation side with regard to the Sovereign Tech Fund partnership for funding a number of useful improvements to the GNOME software stack just as Germany’s STF has been doing to a number of other prominent open-source projects.

While there still aren’t many clear public details on this “major issue”, a Friday night update from the GNOME side seems to indicate all is well and they are also embarking on additional development funding initiatives.

Tonight’s post on the GNOME website is entitled “Exciting Updates on the GNOME Development Initiative and Sovereign Tech Fund” with the key takeaways being: - The contracted work continues to progress, and the Sovereign Tech Fund is very encouraged by what has been accomplished to date.

• The areas of work currently being funded by STF are planned to continue and to be strengthened and expanded as part of our new, permanent GNOME Development Initiative, as described in our draft strategic plan: foundation.gnome.org/strategicplan - The Foundation is reorganizing the project and hiring an additional program manager to work with current managers on the new Initiative.

We are finalizing a contract for transitional work with the new manager and will make a formal announcement next week.

So at least from today’s update at face value, all seems well with the important Sovereign Tech Fund partnership…

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Vulkan 1.3.286 was released today with a handful of corrections/clarifications as well as one new extension.

Besides all the routine fixes to the specification, Vulkan 1.3.286 does present one new addition: VK_EXT_shader_replicated_composites.

The VK_EXT_shader_replicated_composites extension allows for creating composites from a single value in SPIR-V modules.

The SPV_EXT_replicated_composites SPIR-V extension that was introduced this week explains: “This extension adds instructions to create composite objects whose constituents all have the same value without requiring the value to be provided for each constituent.”

Overall the Vulkan 1.3.286 update is rather light, more details on it via GitHub.

Separately, NVIDIA today posted their 550.40.63 Linux Vulkan driver beta that adds EXT_legacy_vertex_attributes and GOOGLE_user_type support along with image load/store support for VK_FORMAT_D16_UNORM and VK_FORMAT_D32_SFLOAT formats.

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It’s the result of a use-after-free error, a class of vulnerability that occurs in software written in the C and C++ languages when a process continues to access a memory location after it has been freed or deallocated.

At the time this Ars post went live, there were no known details about the active exploitation.

A deep-dive write-up of the vulnerability reveals that these exploits provide “a very powerful double-free primitive when the correct code paths are hit.” Double-free vulnerabilities are a subclass of use-after-free errors that occur when the free() function for freeing memory is called more than once for the same location.

The write-up lists multiple ways to exploit the vulnerability, along with code for doing so.

The double-free error is the result of a failure to achieve input sanitization in netfilter verdicts when nf_tables and unprivileged user namespaces are enabled.

Some of the most effective exploitation techniques allow for arbitrary code execution in the kernel and can be fashioned to drop a universal root shell.

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