Programming Leftovers

• GCC's Profile Guided Optimization Performance With The Ryzen 9 5950X - Phoronix

  Given the talk in prior days around patches for PGO'ing the Linux kernel and some readers not being familiar with Profile Guided Optimizations by code compilers, here are some fresh benchmarks on a Ryzen 9 5950X looking at the benefits of applying PGO optimizations to various benchmarks. We have benchmarked GCC and Clang PGO performance many times over the years with this just being some fresh data using a Ryzen 9 5950X and the latest software stack on Ubuntu 20.10. The testing was done by first running various open-source benchmarks without PGO, repeating the tests to generate profiles for the compiler to consume with PGO, and then benchmarking those PGO-enabled builds. These numbers are about best case scenarios given that with the testing for the PGO-enabled build, the benchmarks are repeated and thus matching well to the original profile. In more real-world, general purpose scenarios it can be more difficult generating an accurate profile for your actual workflow / software usage.

• libsigsegv @ Savannah: libsigsegv 2.13 is released

  libsigsegv version 2.13 is released.

• I told you so, 2021 edition

  You will recall that in 2004, which is now seventeen years ago, I wrote a document explaining why I made the design trade-offs that I did in XScreenSaver, and in that document I predicted this exact bug as my example of, "this is what will happen if you don't do it this way."

  And they went and made that happen.

  Repeatedly.

• Jamie Zawinski Calls Cinnamon Screensaver Lock-Bypass Bug 'Unconscionable'

  Legendary programmer Jamie Zawinski has worked on everything from the earliest releases of the Netscape Navigator browser to XEmacs, Mozilla, and, of course, the XScreenSaver project.

• Why and How to Use Java.util.stream.Collectors

  Streams are a wonderful feature in Java allowing you to write clean, efficient and powerful code. If you haven’t consumed the output of the stream, you will probably want to collect it. That’s when the methods from Java.util.stream.Collectors come to help.

Kernel and Graphics: exFAT, Linux 5.12, Mesa's Panfrost Gallium3D and Mesa 21.0

• Linux's exFAT Driver Will Soon Be Able To Delete Big Files Much Faster - Phoronix

  For those making use of Linux's modern exFAT file-system, a significant optimization is on the way for when deleting files with the "dirsync" mount option set.  The exFAT file-system driver for Linux 5.12 should be able to delete (large) files much faster when running with the "dirsync" mount option set where the directory updates are done synchronously. 

 

• AMD + Older Intel CPUs To See Much Faster AES-NI XTS Crypto Performance On Linux 5.12 - Phoronix

  AMD processors along with older Intel processors will enjoy much faster AES-NI XTS crypto performance with the Linux 5.12 kernel this spring.  Processors supporting AES-NI instructions and that also are subject to Retpolines as part of their Spectre V2 mitigations will enjoy a big speed-up with AES-NI XTS for that next version of the Linux kernel. This includes past and current AMD processors as well as older Intel CPUs, but recent Intel processors do not need the return trampolines and thus not subject to this speed-up as they are not currently handicapped. 

• Mesa's Lima Driver Finally Implements OpenGL Shader Cache Support - Phoronix

  While Mesa's Panfrost Gallium3D driver has been working out well for modern ARM Mali open-source graphics support, for the old Mali 400/450 series hardware there still is the "Lima" driver within Mesa that doesn't receive too much attention these days (just around 70 commits over the past year) but as its first work of 2021 saw an initial shader cache implementation.

• Radeon Vulkan "RADV" Driver Saw Many Optimizations This Week For Mesa 21.0 - Phoronix

  Prior to Mesa 21.0 being branched this week in preparations for the quarterly stable Mesa3D release, a number of open-source Radeon Vulkan "RADV" driver optimizations were merged.

Audiocasts/Shows: TWIL and GNU World Order

• TWIL 134: WINE 6.0, Flatpak 1.10, Fedora Kinoite, Slimbook Titan, AlmaLinux, JingOS

  On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’ve got an update for you about a CentOS alternative from CloudLinux called AlmaLinux. The company Slimbook announced a new Laptop called the Slimbook Titan and it is a very interesting piece of hardware with AMD Ryzen 7 & RTX 3070. We’ve also got releases from some big open source projects like WINE 6.0 and Flatpak 1.10. We’ve also got some interesting distro news from Fedora and a new OS called JingOS which has a very iPad-like design. In App News, we’ll talk about Mozilla’s VPN Now Available for Linux and we’ll end the show with a big Humble Bundle Bonanza. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

• GNU World Order 389

  Hardware review of the Devastator 3 keyboard and mouse, and all about **tmux** , plus an obligatory mention of **usbmuxd**.

KDE Customization Guide: Here are 11 Ways You Can Change the Look and Feel of Your KDE-Powered Linux Desktop

KDE Plasma desktop is unarguably the pinnacle of customization, as you can change almost anything you want. You can go to the extent of making it act as a tiling window manager. KDE Plasma can confuse a beginner by the degree of customization it offers. As options tend to pile on top of options, the user starts getting lost. To address that issue, I’ll show you the key points of KDE Plasma customization that you should be aware of.