KDE: Kate and Konsole

 

• The Kate Text Editor - January 2021

  It not only got some nice visual refresh but a much better fuzzy matching algorithm. The fuzzy matching algorithm is on its way to be upstream to KCoreAddons to be used by more parts of the KDE universe. Praise to Waqar Ahmed for implementing this and pushing it to upstream. And thanks to Forrest Smith for allowing us to use his matching algorithm under LGPLv2+! [...] As you can see on our team page a lot of new people helped out in the scope of the last year. I hope to see more people showing up there as new contributors. It is a pleasure that Waqar Ahmed & Jan Paul Batrina now have full KDE developer accounts! Especially Waqar came up with a lot of nifty ideas what could be fixed/improved/added and he did already do a lot of work to actually get these things done! I actually wanted to write earlier about what cool new stuff is there, but had too much review requests to look after. Great! ;=) No I can read review request instead of light novels in the evening.

 

• Contributing to Konsole

  I never thought I could contribute with Open Source, or even imagined I could change my workspace, in my mind doing it was beyond my programming skills. I was a Windows user for a long time, until one day I couldn’t stand anymore how the system was so slow, it was not a top computer, but it was a reasonable one to be that slow. So I changed to Debian and used it for a time until change to other distros, but I was amazed how fast it was, of course I couldn’t use all of the same programs I used to work with but I did learn new ones.

GNU: GNU Binutils 2.36, GCC 11, and GTK 4.0

• GNU Binutils 2.36 Released With Support For Intel AMX, AVX VNNI, Key Locker - Phoronix

  GNU Binutils 2.36 is out today as the latest version of this collection of binary utilities for Linux/open-source systems. As usual the x86_64 space for today's Binutils update is fairly eventful around supporting new CPU instructions. There is now support for AVX VNNI, HRESET, UINTR, TDX, AMX and Intel Key Locker instructions. All these additions are fairly notable for new and upcoming CPUs, especially the likes of the Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) and AVX (non-AVX-512) VNNI. Intel's open-source developers continue doing a good job on ensuring timely support for new CPU features in the Linux space.

• gcc 11: libgccjit is no longer 'alpha'

• GCC's JIT Library Is No Longer Considered "Alpha" Quality - Phoronix

  With the upcoming GCC 11 compiler release the GNU compiler's just-in-time (JIT) library is no longer considered to be of alpha quality. Libgccjit is considered production quality with GCC 11. GCC 5 was released nearly six years ago already and with that release came the introduction of this GCC JIT library initially developed by Red Hat's compiler experts. It was initially written as an embed-friendly library, to be used by bytecode interpreters and other potential use-cases with there even having been an experimental Python compiler.

• GTK4 Toolkit Seeing More Improvements To Its OpenGL Renderer - Phoronix

  While GTK 4.0 has been released, there still is major work to look forward to with future GTK4 releases. One area seeing recent and ongoing improvements is with the toolkit's OpenGL renderer. Even though GTK4 has a Vulkan renderer, the OpenGL renderer is still of interest for cross-platform support particularly for macOS where Vulkan doesn't exist unless employing MoltenVK. There is also still legacy and other cases like the Nouveau driver stack where Vulkan isn't available, thus in 2021 working on the OpenGL renderer still pays off.

openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2021/03

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers, Shame on me for giving you the information about the changes in Tumbleweed during this week only now, but at least technically this is still the review of Week 03. Since the last weekly review, there have been 6 snapshots published (0114, 0115, 0118, 0119, 0120, and 0121).

Intel Has A New Driver For Linux 5.12: Reporting Your Laptop's Hinge/Keyboard Angle

Intel's latest open-source Linux driver contribution is a hinge driver that is set to debut with Linux 5.12. The "hid-sensor-custom-intel-hinge" driver is for supporting a hinge sensor found in many modern Intel laptops. This sensor is able to calculate the angle of the laptop's hinge, the screen angle, and the keyboard angle relative to the horizon/ground. I hadn't realized this sensor was all that common these days but apparently so and enough interest to Intel that they have now provided a Linux driver for exposing this hinge / keyboard / screen angle data. Also: Learn To Get Involved In Linux Kernel Development This Spring