SharkLinux – Virtualization and cloud compatible Linux distro

Today, we are going to take a look at a specialized Linux distro, SharkLinux. It is a cloud compatible and virtualization Linux distro that you can use in the cloud. SharkLinux is an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the MATE desktop and is best aimed for sysadmin testing, developers, and virtualization hobbyists. It follows a rolling release model for updates.

Events: WordPress Livestream, SUSECon, JupyterCon, LibrePlanet

• Pop-Up Livestream on February 22

  This should be a great way to get to hear from some speakers who have yet to share their knowledge on a global stage. WordPress is enriched by a multitude of experiences and perspectives, and I hope you are as excited as I am to hear new voices from a part of the world that is frequently underrepresented in the WordPress open source project.

• Get Expert Guided Hands-On Experience at the SUSECON 2020 Pre-Conference Workshops

• Get Certified During SUSECON 2020

• JupyterCon 2020 is a go!

  Just over a year ago, Project Jupyter announced it was reevaluating its annual community conference. An advisory committee of volunteers recommended a JupyterCon 2020 emphasizing a focus on access and leadership. We are now thrilled to announce a global Jupyter conference...

• Announcing JupyterCon 2020

  NumFOCUS is excited to be a part of JupyterCon 2020. JupyterCon will be held August 10 – 14 in Berlin, Germany at the Berlin Conference Center.

• Hot off the presses: a sneak peek at the LibrePlanet 2020 schedule

  LibrePlanet 2020 is organized by the FSF. Hundreds of people from across the globe will converge to explore this year's theme, "Free the Future." We'll be delving into the threats to user freedom that we've all been reading about every day in the media, as well as the unique role the free software movement plays in solving these problems. In addition to the first keynote we announced last month, Brewster Kahle, LibrePlanet 2020 will feature a panoply of presentations. Our lineup includes some talks we absolutely can't wait to see, and we think you'll feel the same way! You can now dive in to the speakers already confirmed and start planning your itinerary. [...] LibrePlanet 2020 offers lots of opportunities for socializing, too! The annual FSF open house will take place on the evening of Friday, March 13th, at the FSF office. And the LibrePlanet Saturday night party will feature a sparkling new location. As we have in the past, we'll organize a dinner specifically for women, genderqueer, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming attendees, please mail campaigns@fsf.org if you're interested in joining. If you are looking to organize your own dinner or meetup, you can do so using the LibrePlanet wiki 2020 conference social and dinner pages as a central place for communication about this.

Graphics: RADV Vulkan Driver, Intel Codecs and Defects, NVIDIA Firmware

• RADV Vulkan Driver Adds Option For Zeroing Out Video Memory

  New to Mesa 20.1-devel is a new option for the Radeon Vulkan "RADV" driver to enable zeroing out video memory allocations. This isn't a new concept with other graphics drivers offering similar functionality for zeroing out the vRAM either for security reasons or working around pesky game/app issues. For example, RadeonSI OpenGL zeros out the vRAM for Rocket League to workaround buggy behavior with that game. But zeroing out the video memory normally isn't done by default for all allocations due to performance reasons. With the new flag to zero vRAM allocations for the RADV Vulkan driver it was done by Valve's Samuel Pitoiset. In this case he mentions it's in part for "future work."

• Intel Gen12/Xe Graphics To Support 12-Bit HEVC/VP9 Decode

  We are learning more about the media engine capabilities with the forthcoming Intel "Gen12" (Xe) Tiger Lake graphics. The documentation for Intel's open-source media-driver that exposes VA-API capabilities on the Linux desktop was recently updated. That updated Intel VA-API Media Driver points to Intel Gen12 dropping VP8 video capabilities but expanding when it comes to 12-bit codec support.

• Intel Sends Out Latest Patches For Mitigating Graphics Flaw On Ivybridge/Haswell

  It has been one month and a few days since Intel first made public the need for graphics driver patching of Gen 7/7.5 graphics for older Ivybridge / Haswell hardware to fix a graphics hardware flaw. That vulnerability also affected the common Intel Gen9 graphics but there the mitigation was uneventful and quickly merged without causing any performance hit. But for Ivybridge/Haswell one month later the graphics driver mitigation for CVE-2019-14615 is still being addressed. This vulnerability is also known as iGPU Leak by the researchers that discovered it but for the Gen7/Gen7.5 protection the mitigation has been particularly problematic. With the initial Gen7/Gen7.5 patches posted in mid-January there was a huge hit to the graphics performance while Intel worked towards no performance loss.

• NVIDIA Posts Firmware Needed For Open-Source GeForce 16 Series Acceleration

  As written about last week, in the works for the Linux 5.7 kernel this spring is open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" acceleration for the GeForce 16 series. That code is currently sitting in the Nouveau development tree until landing in DRM-Next for Linux 5.7, but NVIDIA has now posted the necessary firmware binaries needed for enabling the hardware acceleration on these Turing GPUs.

EasyOS version 2.2.11 released (Easy Buster version 2.2.11)

EasyOS versions 1.x are the "Pyro" series, the latest is 1.3. Easy Pyro is built with packages compiled from source using 'oe-qky-src', a fork of OpenEmbedded. Consequently, the builds are small and streamlined and integrated. The Pyro series may have future releases, but it is considered to be in maintenance status. The "Buster" series start from version 2.0, and are intended to be where most of the action is, ongoing. Version 2.0 was really a beta-quality build, to allow the testers to report back. The first official release was 2.1. The main feature of Easy Buster is that it is built from Debian 10 Buster DEBs, using WoofQ (a fork of Woof2: Woof-CE is another fork, used to build Puppy Linux). The advantage of Buster over Pyro is access to the large Debian package repositories. That is a big plus. More in: EasyOS version 2.2.11 released Also: Working-partition ext4 filesystem shuts down unclean