Linux Graphics: AMD and NVIDIA

• Vega 20 Support Added To RadeonSI Gallium3D Driver

  With the upcoming Linux 4.18 kernel release due out in August there is the AMDGPU kernel driver support for Vega 20, the yet-to-be-released Vega GPU said to be the 7nm part launching later this year in Radeon Instinct products and featuring 32GB of HBM2 and adding some new deep learning instructions. Now the RadeonSI Gallium3D user-space driver for OpenGL within Mesa has Vega 20 support.

• NVIDIA 396.24.10 Linux Driver Brings Vulkan 8-Bit / Renderpass2 / Conditional Render

  NVIDIA developers today released the 396.24.10 driver, their latest beta driver for Linux focused on the latest Vulkan innovations and improvements and is joined by the Windows 398.58 driver. The NVIDIA 396.24.10 Linux driver (and 398.58 beta for Windows) are focused on delivering the functionality added with the recent Vulkan 1.1.80 specification update.

96-core NanoPi Fire3 cluster computer blows past RPi rigs in benchmarks

Cluster computer projects are increasingly looking beyond the Raspberry Pi to build devices with faster cluster-friendly SBCs. Here’s a 96-core monster that taps the octa-core NanoPi Fire3. Cluster computers constructed of Raspberry Pi SBCs have been around for years, ranging from supercomputer-like behemoths to simple hobbyist rigs. More recently, we’ve seen cluster designs that use other open-spec hacker boards, many of which offer higher computer power and faster networking at the same or lower price. Farther below, we’ll examine one recent open source design from Paul Smith at Climbers.net that combines 12 octa-core NanoPi-Fire3 SBCs for a 96-core cluster. Also: Low-profile Apollo Lake Mini-ITX board runs Linux

Software: gksu Alternatives, bootiso and Yay

• Opening Graphical Application with Root Permission – gksu Alternatives in Ubuntu 18.04

  Recently, Ubuntu 18.04 removed gksu from its repositories, causing panic in anyone who relied on the utility on a regular basis. What many people didn’t realize, though, was gksu hadn’t been maintained in a long time. It was already a dead program. Ubuntu finally just made the move to cut ties with it.

• bootiso: Easy ISO To Bootable USB Drive From The Command Line

  If you're looking for a command line tool that is able to create a bootable USB drive from both hybrid and non-hybrid ISO images (it should work with any Linux distribution ISO as well as Microsoft Windows ISO files), with some safety checks in place, you may want to give Bootiso a try.

• Yay – Yet Another Reliable AUR Helper Written In Go

  Howdy Arch Users! I’ve got a good news for you. Today, I stumbled upon yet another reliable AUR helper called “Yay”. Yep! the name of this AUR helper is Yay. In the past, I was using Pacaur for installing AUR packages. It did a great job and I really liked it. I have also used some other AUR helpers such as Packer and Yaourt as well. But, they are all now discontinued and not recommended to use anymore. After reading about Yay features, I thought to give “Yay” a try and see how things works. So, here we go!

Security: Defective Processors, Malicious Proprietary Software and Cost of Bad Software

• freenode Launches New Job Board, Two More Spectre Security Holes Discovered, Debian Joins KDE's Advisory Board, Android Malware Found in the Google Play Store and Stable Kernels Released

  Two new Spectre-type security holes have been discovered. ZDNet reports that this affects any operating system running on AMD, ARM and Intel processors. Vladimir Kiriansky, PhD candidate at MIT, and independent researcher Carl Waldspurger found the new vulnerabilities and published a paper. ZDNet also notes that so far, no known attacks have occurred making use of these bugs, but that likely will change soon.

• Android security: Password-stealing malware sneaks in Google Play store in bogus apps

  A cyber crime group has sneaked apps onto the official Google Play Store which then serve up Trojan banking malware to Android users, security researchers have revealed. Uncovered in June, the campaign delivered Anubis malware designed to steal login credentials for banking apps, e-wallets and payment cards. The payload was hidden in applications which claimed to offer services ranging from online shopping to live stock-market monitoring.

• Google Chrome Will Start Using 10% More RAM Now, Thanks to Spectre

  Soon Google Chrome is going to use even more of your RAM, assuming that it’s even possible to use more than it already does. This is because of Chrome 67’s new Site Isolation feature to protect against Spectre.

• Security in Open Source Software Isn’t Automatic – but It Should Be [Ed: WhiteSource wants to sell its crap. Pretends only FOSS has bugs, as usual. Might as well say, "Security in Proprietary Software Isn’t Automatic"]