Graphics: Vulkan, Intel and NVIDIA

• Vulkan 1.2.158 Released With Fragment Shading Rate Extension - Phoronix

  Vulkan 1.2.158 was released this morning with two notable extensions introduced. First up is VK_KHR_fragment_shading_rate that allows changing the rate at which fragments are shaded. Multiple pixels can be shaded now by a single fragment shader invocation. The new extension allows controlling the fragment shading rate on a per-draw, per-primitive, or per-region basis. Most notably this can be used by Vulkan-powered games for shading higher levels of detail in a scene compared to others. Or rather lower quality shading in some areas of the scene.

• Linux 5.10 Continues Bringing Up Support For Intel's Rocket Lake - Phoronix

  Building off Linux 5.9 that featured initial support for Gen12 graphics on next year's Rocket Lake desktop platform along with other early enablement for Rocket Lake like RAPL support and other PCI ID additions, that work has continued for the Linux 5.10 cycle. The libata pull adds Rocket Lake PCH-H RAID PCI IDs as one of the additions. There is also the platform-drivers-x86 work for Linux 5.10 where Rocket Lake support is added to the intel_pmc_core driver.

• GCC's Ada Frontend Seeing More Work On NVIDIA CUDA Support - Phoronix

  Should you want to use the Ada programming language for GPU programming, the GCC compiler has been working on CUDA support within its front-end for this safety and security minded language. In the past born out of academia there's been CUDA Ada bindings. There has also been Ada/SPARK GPU programming initiatives in the past with various APIs. This latest still ongoing effort is wiring up the GCC Ada front-end with CUDA support.

• You may want to avoid Linux Kernel 5.9 if you want fully supported NVIDIA drivers | GamingOnLinux

  On the official NVIDIA forum, an employee put out an announcement warning NVIDIA GPU owners that the Linux Kernel 5.9 and later is currently unsupported. It's worth noting they posted that in the CUDA forum, so other workloads like gaming may work as normal. In the post they mention Kernel 5.9+ is currently "incompatible" with any of their drivers, and they're suggesting to wait until "mid-November" for a fresh NVIDIA driver update which is expected to bring support for it. They're "working diligently" to get ready to support it.

Con Kolivas Releases Linux 5.9-ck1 (MuQSS)

  

• -ck hacking: linux-5.9-ck1, MuQSS version 0.204 for linux-5.9

  Unfortunately these past few months have been marred by lockdown and family issues, culminating in the ultimate death of my father just over a month ago (unrelated to covid19 but made that much worse because of its effects on everything in our city) so linux kernel was the furthest thing from my mind and a 5.8 resync never happened. He'll be sorely missed, and if this were something more substantial I'd dedicate it towards him but it doesn't do him justice. Announcing a new -ck release, 5.9-ck1  with the latest version of the Multiple Queue Skiplist Scheduler, version 0.204 These are patches designed to improve system responsiveness and interactivity with specific emphasis on the desktop, but configurable for any workload. 

• Linux 5.9-ck1 Released With Updated MuQSS - Phoronix

  Independent Linux kernel developer Con Kolivas (and retired anaesthetist) is back on track with a new update to his "CK" patch-set and the MuQSS scheduler.  The retired doctor had taken some time off from his kernel development hobby earlier this year to help design equipment for the COVID-19 battle. He did manage to release his updated patches for Linux 5.7 but has been becoming increasingly concerned over the size of the Linux kernel and his ability in the future to continue maintaining these independent patches as a result. Making the matters worse, his father passed away (non-COVID) and that further complicated his development work. 

Change CPU Governor And Frequencies On Linux With cpupower-gui (New Release)

cpupower-gui is a tool that makes it easy to change the CPU governor as well as the CPU frequency limits on Linux. [...] This Python3 + Gtk3 application was updated to version 0.9.0 (followed by 0.9.1 to fix a few bugs) recently with new features, like the ability to use custom CPU profiles for quickly switching the settings. You can switch between the 2 pre-built profiles, Balanced and Performance, from the cpupower-gui user interface, but you can't change them or create a new profile from there.

Ubuntu Vs Pop!_OS: Which One’s Better?

Both Ubuntu and Pop!OS is great for beginners as well as professionals. Like how the budget Android devices ship with a lot of bloatware, Ubuntu also ships with bloatware, resulting in a relatively poor user experience and performance compared to Pop!_OS. Ubuntu also comes with “Ubuntu Minimal options” that don’t include many applications letting you install what you actually need. Apart from that, Ubuntu’s software center has a built-in section for snap applications, whereas you won’t find snap packages in the Pop!_OS shop rather you’ll find the Flatpak package option. However, Snap packages take too much space on the disk; hence, we suggest you consider using the APT version of any application. Pop!_OS also has its own official PPA, where you can find applications like TensorFlow and Android Studio one “apt-get install” away from installing.