IBM/Red Hat/Fedora Leftovers

• Driving the organization towards Digital Innovation Excellence: 5 key dimensions to consider

  In our first post we introduced the three pillars to digital innovation success (automation, hybrid cloud and cloud native), in this next post we wanted to dive a little deeper into what digital innovation excellence means. Across Europe business leaders we talk to say that software is central to digital innovation and that organizations must become software producers at increasing speed and scale. As organizations evolve to become producers of software, the role of software development and delivery expands. Not only are organizations plugging into software development and delivery capabilities to increase organizational competitiveness by controlling a larger share of digital value creation, but software increasingly becomes part of the business's core product and services offerings. But that's not all. Software delivery is also expanding to support the ability to scale digital distribution and monetization of digital products and services through the digital ecosystem. This means that software can be delivered as a service, through direct sales channels, via APIs, open source repositories or via developer.com style platforms. Software is truly permeating the organization and digital innovation factories and supply chains become new organization requirements for digital resiliency.

• Ben Williams: F33-20210114 updated Live isos released [Ed: New builds of Fedora 33]

  The Fedora Respins SIG is pleased to announce the latest release of Updated F33-20210114-Live ISOs, carrying the 5.10.6-200 kernel. This set of updated isos will save considerable amounts of updates after install. ((for new installs.)(New installs of Workstation have about 800MB+ of updates)). A huge thank you goes out to irc nicks dowdle, dbristow, luna, yogoyo, Southern-Gentleman for testing these iso.

• Fedora 33 : Using the finch chat program.

  Finch is a TUI (text user interface) IM client for Linux which uses libpurple. This is very useful when you want to chat and don't have an environment to install Fedora on. Finch is built using the ncurses toolkit, which is a library designed especially to built text user interfaces. This program lets you sign on to Jabber, GoogleTalk, IRC, and other IM networks. 

• Red Hat and Intel expand 5G collaboration as new market opportunities emerge

  IBM Corp.’s Red Hat unit and Intel Corp. today announced an “evolution” of their partnership aimed at more closely aligning their product development activities in the 5G market. Carriers are spending billions of dollars to upgrade their networks to the 5G standard, which enables connections up to 100 times faster than LTE. The spending spree is creating new revenue opportunities for information technology suppliers such as Red Hat and Intel. The new collaboration, the companies said, will have several focus areas. One is to bring 5G features faster to key open-source technologies such as Kubernetes. Kubernetes eases the management of software container-based workloads, which can make it useful for carriers that are using containers to build the software powering their 5G networks.

• Your Easiest Decision in 2021

  The 3-way collaboration across IBM, SUSE and SAP go back many years. We have a deep engineering relationship that speaks to the dedication to customers, performance and engineering excellence that permeates all 3 company’s cultures. In 2020, even amidst this crazy pandemic, we have continued our regular working relationship – striving to provide the best product, and the best support.

Graphics: Latest From Intel and AMD

• Intel "Compute Walker" Support Lands For Xe HP In Linux Drivers - Phoronix

  A new compute code path has been merged into Intel's open-source "ANV" Vulkan and "iris" Gallium3D drivers for the forthcoming Xe HP graphics hardware. The initial "COMPUTE_WALKER" code has been in development at Intel for the past 1~2 years while the merge request was just submitted a few days ago to replace the "legacy" compute path from the upcoming Gen12.5 Xe HP hardware. The check is for newer than Gen12 or GEN12HP, so the new compute path will trickle down to lower-tier parts outside of the Xe HP scope moving forward after the existing Gen12 parts like Tiger Lake or the upcoming Rocket Lake still flagged as Gen12 (not 12.5).

• AMD Sends In More "New Stuff" For Radeon Graphics With Linux 5.12 - Phoronix

  Sent in last week were many AMD graphics driver updates slated for Linux 5.12 including the likes of Radeon RX 6000 series OverDrive support. This week marks another batch of AMDGPU kernel driver changes being submitted to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 5.12 cycle. Among the "new stuff" for AMDGPU in Linux 5.12 include more code warning fixes, enabling of GPU reset and recovery for Navy Flounder yet-to-be-released RDNA 2 SKUs, SMU workload profile fixes for APUs, various display code updates, SR-IOV fixes, various VanGogh APU updates, another Renoir device ID being added, the new bits around Secure Display TA, another Green Sardine device ID being added, and a range of other code improvements.

• Mesa's RADV ACO Adds Support For Rapid Packed Math - Phoronix

  Hitting the Mesa tree when Mesa 21.0 was being branched (but looks like it will still make it now part of "staging/21.0") is support for AMD's "rapid packed math" with the RADV driver's ACO compiler back-end. Rapid Packed Math is the AMD terminology for allowing two FP16 operations within a single FP32 operation. ACO, which is the default shader compiler back-end since last year in Mesa's RADV driver, now supports this functionality for Vec2 16-bit operations.

Games: WRATH: Aeon of Ruin, Rocket Shipment, Source 2, Beamdog

• WRATH: Aeon of Ruin launching along with Linux support this Summer, third update out now | GamingOnLinux

  WRATH: Aeon of Ruin is a dark fantasy-horror FPS powered by the original Quake engine from publishers 3D Realms and 1C Entertainment and developer KillPixel Games. The full release across all platforms (Windows currently supported in Early Access) has been delayed until "Summer 2021", this is due to COVID-19 as some of their team sadly caught it and needed recovery time. Even so, they've managed to push out a third content update. “While delays are never ideal, we wanted to release one awesome final update before going heads down to knock this out of the park,” said Frederik Schreiber, Vice President of 3D Realms and Producer on WRATH. “Summer may seem far away, but we are working diligently to make WRATH the best game it can be.”

• Rocket Shipment is a slick homage to Thrust and Crazy Gravity now in Early Access | GamingOnLinux

  Rocket Shipment is a tricky, physics based, space delivery game. The game is a love letter to the old style lander games like Thrust, Solar Jetman and Crazy Gravity. After being in development for two years now, it has entered Early Access on Steam and will remain there until closer to the end of 2021 when the full content gets added in. It's simple and right to the point, keeping the game mechanics nicely glued together. The main mechanic is using a physics based grappling cable to move packages and other object around, while managing your fuel levels. There's also a built in level editor, and Steam Workshop support to upload and download extra levels.

• Valve's Source 2 shows early teasers of Ray Tracing - weirdly in Artifact updates

  We know that Source 2 from Valve is a pretty capable game engine, and we've seen what they've been able to do with it over the years (and Half-Life: Alyx turned it up a notch) but what's next? Ray Tracing perhaps.

  

• Beamdog need your help to test Enhanced Editions of Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate | GamingOnLinux

  Getting real close to release now is the huge 2.6 upgrade for the Beamdog classic RPGs now including Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear and Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. They've gradually moved from one game to the next, opening up an opt-in Beta you can try for each right now on Steam. Each of them needing some feedback to ensure you can properly play it including double-checking the save system is working correctly. [...] Want to get involved? They need Linux testing too (the Beta is Steam only, other stores when ready).