Games for GNU/Linux

• 'Niche - a genetics survival game' released with Linux support

  Thanks to a GOL supporter I've had a chance to check out 'Niche - a genetics survival game' [Official Site, Steam] and breed my tribe of weird looking animals. I am pleased to say that so far the Linux version looks pretty good, I haven't encountered any issues other than my own confusion on just what is going on. The game is currently in Early Access, so it will have bugs and incomplete features.

• 'Pavilion', the very stylish fourth-person puzzling adventure released with day-1 Linux support

  I wrote about 'Pavilion' [Official Site, Steam, Humble Store] months ago, so it's pleasing to see it release as promised with day-1 Linux support. The game has some serious style to it.

• 'Stash: No Loot Left Behind', the new MMO from Frogdice is now available in Early Access

Linux Graphics

• NVIDIA Shows Off Their Latest Linux-Powered AI Car Demonstration

  For those curious how NVIDIA's DRIVE PX 2 system is working and how their self-driving car efforts are progressing, they've published a new video today showing their self-driving car that's taught by deep learning with analyzing human driving patterns.

• NVIDIA Announces "Xavier" AI Supercomputer SoC With Custom ARM64 + Volta GPU

  NVIDIA announced at GTC Europe today their forthcoming Xavier SoC that will succeed Parker. At least for now, Xavier is super exciting and is aimed to be a "AI supercomputer" SoC.

• NVIDIA Officially Releases CUDA 8

  CUDA 8.0 comes with full support for the Pascal GPU architecture including the Tesla P100/P40/P4 accelerators, new unified memory capabilities, native FP16 and INT8 computation support, nvGRAPH, new profiling capabilities, improved compiler performance, and expanded developer platform support. The new nvGRAPH addition is a GPU-accelerated graph analytics library. The expanded platform coverage now includes Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with GCC 5.4.

• Intel's Beignet OpenCL For Linux Now Supports LLVM 3.9

  With the recent Beignet 1.2 release some Phoronix readers expressed disappointment that this Intel OpenCL implementation for Iris/HD Graphics hadn't supported the recently-released LLVM 3.9.

• A Deep Dive Into Vulkan's Validation Layers

Alpine Linux 3.4.4 released

The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.4.4 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

Firefox Changes

• Mozilla has “stopped all commercial development of Firefox OS”

  Remember when Mozilla said it was ceasing development of Firefox OS for smartphones, but that it wasn’t giving up on the browser-based operating system altogether? Yeah, now the organization has pretty much thrown in the towel. After shifting the focus from phones to smart TVs and other Internet of Things products for a while, Mozilla senior engineering program manager Julie McCracken says development of the operating system was “gradually wound down” and that as of the end of July Mozilla has “stopped all commercial development of Firefox OS.

• Firefox’s Test Pilot Program Launches Three New Experimental Features

  Earlier this year we launched our first set of experiments for Test Pilot, a program designed to give you access to experimental Firefox features that are in the early stages of development. We’ve been delighted to see so many of you participating in the experiments and providing feedback, which ultimately, will help us determine which features end up in Firefox for all to enjoy. Since our launch, we’ve been hard at work on new innovations, and today we’re excited to announce the release of three new Test Pilot experiments. These features will help you share and manage screenshots; keep streaming video front and center; and protect your online privacy.