GNU Project: GCC 11.1 Release Candidate and Cryptographic Algorithms GnuTLS

• GCC 11.1 Release Candidate available from gcc.gnu.org

  The first release candidate for GCC 11.1 is available from
  
   https://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/snapshots/11.1.0-RC-20210420/
   ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/snapshots/11.1.0-RC-20210420
  
  and shortly its mirrors.  It has been generated from git revision
  r11-8265-g246abba01f302eb453475b650ba839ec905be76d.
  
  I have so far bootstrapped and tested the release candidate on
  x86_64-linux and i686-linux.  Please test it and report any issues to
  bugzilla.
  
  If all goes well, I'd like to release 11.1 on Tuesday, April 27th.
  

• GCC 11.1 RC Released, GCC 12 In Development On Trunk

  The release candidate to GCC 11.1 as the first stable release of GCC 11 is now available for testing. If all goes well GCC 11.1.0 will officially debut next week while GCC 12 is now in development with their latest Git code. Red Hat's Jakub Jelinek announced the GCC 11.1 release candidate today, which has been bootstrapped and tested so far for i686 and x86_64 Linux. He is hoping to release GCC 11.1 officially next week if all goes well.

• Daiki Ueno: AF_ALG support in GnuTLS

  The Linux kernel implements a set of cryptographic algorithms to be used by other parts of the kernel. These algorithms can be accessed through the internal API; notable consumers of this API are encrypted network protocols such as IPSec and WireGuard, as well as data encryption as in fscrypt. The kernel also provides an interface for user-space programs to access the kernel crypto API. GnuTLS has recently gained a new crypto backend that uses the kernel interface in addition to the user-space implementation. There are a few benefits of having it. The most obvious one is performance improvement: while the existing user-space assembly implementation has comparable performance to the in-kernel software emulation, the kernel crypto implementation also enables workload offloading to hardware accelerators, such as Intel QAT cards. Secondly, it brings support for a wider variety of CPU architectures: not only IA32 and AArch64, but also PowerPC and s390. The last but not least is that it could be used as a potential safety net for the crypto algorithms implementation: deferring the crypto operations to the kernel means that we could have an option to workaround any bugs or compliance (such as FIPS140) issues in the library.

More JingPad A1 Linux tablet detailed revealed ahead of crowdfunding

The JingPad A1 is a tablet with an 11 inch AMOLED touchscreen display, support for digital pen input, and a detachable keyboard that lets you use the tablet like a laptop. It also has an operating system that’s designed for both tablet and laptop mode. That’s because the JingPad A1 will be the first tablet to ship with JingOS, an operating system developed by Chinese company Jingling that’s a custom Linux distribution designed for tablets but capable of running desktop applications (as well as some Android applications). First unveiled in March, the tablet will go up for pre-order soon through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. Jingling hasn’t announced a price yet, but an Indiegogo preview page is now live, and folks who sign up with an email address may be able to save 40-percent when orders open up in May.

Firefly ROC-RK3566-PC: Another credit card-sized Linux PC with a Rockchip RK3566 processor

Rockchip’s RK3566 processor is a new 1.8 GHz ARM Cortex-A55 chip with Mali-G52 graphics and support for features including playback of 4K/60Hz video in H.264, H.265, and VP9 codecs. The first single-board computers (SBCs) powered by the chip are expected to ship in the coming months. Last week Pine64 revealed that a Raspberry Pi-sized SBC called the Quartz64 Model B was on the way. Now Firefly has introduced a similarly-sized RK3566 SBC called the ROC-RK3566-PC.