Nvidia enables support for OpenGL and Vulkan rendering on Xwayland! Intel releases sluggish microcode, bringing the AUR to Ubuntu, and what happened to the Microsoft Linux repos?
Listen:
Download:
Subscribe Spotify | Pandora | TuneIn | RSS | More
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
04:26 Nvidia xwayland drivers
10:06 Rocky Linux 8.4
15:21 Intel microcode regression
19:31 KVR audio plugin developer challenge
22:26 AUR for Ubuntu
27:11 Rust tldr
29:51 Microsoft Linux outage
40:51 Radxa Zero SBC
44:41 Emails
Colour key: Venn Pedro Jill
Nvidia Wayland
https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/176525/en-us
- Initial support for hardware accelerated OpenGL and Vulkan rendering on Xwayland.
- They also added support for PRIME Display Offload where the display offload source is AMDGPU.
- For the gamers, they added DLSS with Proton and it’s legit.
- Went from 57 to 82 @ 2160p in Youngblood.
- I have not figured out a way to capture this, yet.
- Also, added support for PRIME Display Offload where both the display offload source and display offload sink are driven by the NVIDIA X Driver.
- Nvidia PRIME support for AMDGPUs is huge!
- I read complaints all the time with PRIME users with AMDGPUs having a hard time getting this working.
- Those of us using Nvidia PRIME with Intel VPUs have had a much easier time of it.
- I guess that poster behind Venn did something.
- The NVidia to Nvidia offloading will make an interesting case for lower power systems, like, I don’t know, an ARM Tegra System with an IGP and a dedicated GPU both being NVidia.
- CoolBits 1 and 2 are now enabled for mismatched SLI and Fan Control by default.
Rocky 8.4
https://rockylinux.org/news/rocky-linux-8-4-ga-release/
- For those of you who didn’t take this opportunity to switch to Debian.
- Wow, that was fast, the CentOS replacement distro Rocky Linux first general release is out!
- Rocky Linux 8.4 is stable for production systems and binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 so you can run RHEL apps without RHEL installed.
- The “Green Obsidian” release lets other RHEL 8.4 binary-compatible distributions use the free migrate2rocky tool for convenient, in-place migration.
- Rocky Linux free community support: Mattermost, IRC, and forums.
- Paid commercial support: CIQ
- So, is there a sanctioned way to migrate from an existing Cent 7 install to Balboa Linux?
- Looks like a solid “not yet” on that one:
- https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/transition-from-centos-to-rocky/389/32
Slow Microcode
https://travisdowns.github.io/blog/2021/06/17/rip-zero-opt.html
- This is not a big performance hit.
- Microcode updates are stored in volatile memory.
- What I’m saying is mitigations=off has no power here.
- By opening the box Schrödinger’s cat was in, he effectively killed it.
- It’s hard to get an accurate measurement if the system changes every time you look at it.
- The performance improvements from the zero fill optimizations got nuked by Intel’s continued efforts to thwart speculative and side channel attacks.
- My new MSI Prestige laptop has a Comet Lake CPU, not the Ice Lake CPU so hopefully it wouldn’t be affected . . .
KVR Developer Challenge 2021
https://www.kvraudio.com/kvr-developer-challenge/2021/
- The challenge is to create and release a brand new free audio plug-in, application or sound library / pack / set that will benefit the community at large.
- Five cash prizes will be awarded to the top entries and a wildcard pick.
- Public beta testing is not allowed.
- Not required to be open-source but it’s suggested.
- They included Linux in the audio plugin challenge, kinda.
- I would like to see the requirement be cross-platform.
AUR for Ubuntu
https://github.com/pacstall/pacstall
- What kind of hot mess be this.
- The AUR for Ubuntu is making it easier to install programs without scouring github repos.
- How does it deal with existing applications installed via Snap, Flatpak, and apt?
- This is Pacstall, which will attempt to become the Arch User Repository Ubuntu wishes it had.
- This is an amazing project created by a 15 year old developer who just wanted to have a repository for developers to package and distribute their own apps like the AUR.
- Install an app: sudo pacstall -I “foo, or any app that is available”
- Pacstall is new and a work in progress, but of the apps currently available I installed neofetch and cmatrix.
- It uses build scripts like the AUR does, so it would work the same as if you cloned the git, built, and installed it yourself, except someone’s already injected malware figured out all the deps and preparation steps.
Man Elks
https://opensource.com/article/21/6/tealdeer-linux
- It’s tldr but in Rust.
- It simplifies man pages down to the basics and examples so it’s easy to figure out
- It’s available in the Fedora/RH/Cent repos, obviously.
- No such luck on the ‘buntus.
- I always forget about tldr, because as an old Linux user I am just used to slogging through man pages.
MS repos downtime
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/microsofts-linux-repositories-were-down-for-18-hours/
- Azure, the cloud of choice of those who don’t get a choice because management.
- You would think a scrappy little upstart like MS could avoid such issues.
- Github actions were pretty severely affected by this.
- Also affected users trying to install .NET Core, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft SQL Server for Linux.
- Saw all the hubbub on Twitter.
- VS Code, Teams, and Edge were effectively unavailable.
- So if you had a Raspberry Pi you still hadn’t disabled the MS repo on, the 404 probably reminded you.
Slice of Pi
Radxa Zero
http://linuxgizmos.com/tiny-radxa-zero-sbc-runs-armbian-on-amlogic-s905y2/
- 4GB of DDR4 for $45.
- It’s a steeper price from the $10 RPi 0W, but it’s also a significantly faster beast with 16GB of eMMC on board.
- And if it already runs Armbian, it can run RetroArch or even Lakka with some finagling
Feedback
Interfacing
