Linux Graphics

• The RADV Radeon Vulkan Linux Driver Continues Picking Up Features

• OpenChrome Maintainer Making Some Progress On VIA DRM Driver

  Independent developer Kevin Brace took over maintaining the OpenChrome DDX driver earlier this year to improve the open-source VIA Linux graphics support while over the summer he's slowly been getting up to speed on development of the OpenChrome DRM driver. The OpenChrome DRM driver was making progress while James Simmons was developing it a few years back, but since he left the project, it's been left to bit rot. It will take a lot of work even to get this previously "good" code back to working on the latest Linux 4.x mainline kernels given how DRM core interfaces have evolved in recent times.

• My talk about Mainline Explicit Fencing at XDC 2016!

  Last week I was at XDC in Helsinki where I presented about the Explicit Fencing work we’ve been doing on the Mainline Linux Kernel in the lastest few months. There was a livestream of all presentations during the conference and recorded sections are available. You can check the video of my presentation. Check out the slides too.

Linux Kernel News

• Linux 4.8 gets rc8

  Chill, penguin-fanciers: Linux lord Linus Torvalds is sitting on the egg that is Linux 4.8 for another week. As Torvalds indicated last week, this version of the kernel still needs work and therefore earned itself an eighth release candidate.

• Linux 4.8-rc8 Released: Linux 4.8 Next Weekend

• Linux Kernel 4.7.5 Released with Numerous ARM and Networking Improvements

  The fifth maintenance update to the Linux 4.7 kernel series, which is currently the most advanced, secure and stable kernel branch you can get for your GNU/Linux operating system, has been announced by Greg Kroah-Hartman. Linux kernel 4.7.5 is here only ten days after the release of the previous maintenance version, namely Linux kernel 4.7.4, and it's a big update that changes a total of 213 files, with 1774 insertions and 971 deletions, which tells us that the kernel developers and hackers had a pretty busy week patching all sorts of bugs and security issues, as well as to add various, much-needed improvements.

• Blockchain Summit Day Two: End-Of-Conference Highlights From Shanghai

  Financial services firms and startups looking to be the bridge to blockchain ledgers continued to dominate presentations on the second and final day of the Blockchain Summit, ending International Blockchain Week in Shanghai that also saw Devcon2 and a startup demo competition.

• Testing Various HDDs & SSDs On Ubuntu With The Linux 4.8 Kernel

  Here are some fresh benchmarks of various solid-state drives (SATA 3.0 SSDs plus two NVMe M.2 SSDs) as well as two HDDs for getting a fresh look at how they are performing using the Linux 4.8 Git kernel. After publishing Friday's Intel 600P Series NVME SSD tests of this lower-cost NVM Express storage line-up, I continued testing a few other SSDs and HDDs. These additional reference points are available for your viewing pleasure today. The additional data is also going to be used for reference in a Linux 4.8-based BCache SSD+HDD comparison being published next week. Stay tuned for those fresh BCache numbers.

Behind the GNOME 3.22 Release Video

This is less than usual. The time saving mostly stems from spending less time recording for the release video. At first thought you might think recording would be a breeze but it can be one of the most frustrating aspects of making the videos. Each cycle the GNOME community lands improvement a wide set of GNOME’s applications. So before each release I have to find some way to run a dozen of applications from master. I do this either by:

Games for GNU/Linux

• Katamari Creator’s ALPHABET Now Available for PC, Mac, and Linux

  Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi has his hands full with the PlayStation 4 sandbox game Wattam, however prior to working on that game he squeezed out a side-project with indie developer Adam Saltsman.

• Worms W.M.D should have multiplatform online play by the end of October, including between GOG and Steam

  Worms W.M.D [Official Site] is set to get an update around the end of October that will include multiplatform multiplayer for Linux, Mac and Windows. They also claim that GOG and Steam players should be able to play together then too.

• Super Mario Clone SuperTux 0.5.0 Is Out with In-Game Level Editor, Improvements

  The SuperTux team, through Max Teufel, proudly announced today, September 25, 2016, the release of a significant maintenance update to the Super Mario clone featuring Tux, the Linux mascot. SuperTux 0.5.0 is now the latest version of the game and it's here after being in development for the last nine months, during which it received a total of five RC (Release Candidate) builds implementing the features listed below for your reading pleasure. "The most prominent change for this release is a new in-game level editor which allows you to create levels and worldmaps on-the-fly from within SuperTux itself. We would like to apologize for publishing the 0.4.0 release with a large number of issues," says Max Teufel in today's release announcement.

• SuperTux 0.5 Released With In-Game Level Editor

• Unity 5.5 on Linux, Halcyon 6, and more gaming news