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System76 unveils the Galago Pro ultraportable laptop starting at $999
zikalify posted a topic in Front Page News
System76 unveils the Galago Pro ultraportable laptop starting at $999 by Paul Hill System76, an OEM that’s focused on open-source computing, has announced the availability of the refreshed Galago Pro ultraportable laptop. The Galago Pro includes the latest 13th Gen Intel H-class CPUs, integrated Intel graphics, and a 144Hz screen. The company is pitching the Galago Pro to developers, students, and professionals who need a powerful computer but are always on the move. System76 believes this laptop will be a “top contender” in the ultraportable laptop market and the price reflects that, starting at $999. “The Galago Pro moving to H class CPU is a pretty big move,” said Benjamin Shpurker, Product Manager. “H class without NVIDIA has been desired for quite a while! So we're thrilled to be able to offer this.” The full specifications of the Galago Pro are as follows: Operating System Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Firmware System76 Open Firmware (coreboot, EDK2, System76 Firmware Apps) System76 Open Source Embedded Controller Firmware Processor 13th Gen Intel® Core i5-13500H: Up to 4.7 GHz - 18MB Cache - 4 P-Cores - 8 E-Cores 13th Gen Intel® Core i7-13700H: Up to 5.0 GHz - 24MB Cache - 6 P-Cores - 8 E-Cores Display 14.1″ 1920×1080 FHD, Matte Finish, 144Hz Graphics Intel® Iris Xe Graphics Memory Up to 64GB dual-channel DDR4 @ 3200MHz Storage 1 × M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe. Up to 4TB total. Expansion 1 × Thunderbolt™ 4, 1 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, 2 × USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, SD Card Reader Input Multitouch Clickpad, Backlit Chiclet US QWERTY Keyboard Networking Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 Video Ports HDMI, Thunderbolt 4 Audio Stereo Speakers, 1× Headphone/Microphone Combo Camera 720p HD Webcam Security Kensington® Lock Battery Li-Ion - 53 Wh Charger 90 Watts, AC-in 100~240V, 50~60Hz, DC-out 19V, 4.74A 90W+ USB Type-C Charging Compatible Dimensions 12.79″ × 8.86″ × 0.72″ (32.49 × 22.50 × 1.82cm) Weight 3.2 lbs (1.45kg) Base weight. Varies on configuration. Model galp7 Some other interesting aspects of the Galago Pro are its glare-resistant display and the inclusion of customizable keyboard LEDs via the System76 Keyboard Configurator app. The company also said it will help you extend the life of your new Galago Pro by providing repair guides, replacement parts, lifetime support, and firmware updates. To design and buy a Galago Pro from System76, just head over to the company’s website and press Design + Buy. -
Qubes OS 3.2 - The Most Secure Linux Operating System - Free Tips and Tricks Guide
News Staff posted a topic in Front Page News
Qubes OS 3.2 - The Most Secure Linux Operating System - Free Tips and Tricks Guide by Steven Parker Claim your complimentary free Tips and Tricks Guide, before the offer expires. By downloading this free guide, you agree to receive regular updates on the latest cool apps, product reviews, and giveaways from MakeUseOf. There’s no shortage of Linux operating systems available. However, many Linux distributions (distros) are niche OSes. For instance, Kali Linux is an ethical hacking and penetration testing Linux distro. There are server Linux operating systems, media center Linux distros, and more. However, Qubes OS focuses on security. Its tagline reads: “A reasonably secure operating system.” On its homepage, Qubes OS boasts testimonials from the likes of Edward Snowden. With its onus on security, and superb compartmentalization, freedom, and integrated privacy features, Qubes OS is a functional and intuitive security-oriented Linux operating system. Download today! How to get it: Complete and verifiable information is required in order to receive this offer. If you have previously made use of these free offers, you will not need to re-register. While supplies last! Please ensure you read the terms and conditions to claim this offer. >> Qubes OS 3.2 - The Most Secure Linux Operating System - Free Tips and Tricks Guide << Offered by MakeUseOf, view their other free resources. Limited time offer. We post these because we earn commission on each lead so as not to rely solely on advertising, which many of our readers block. It all helps toward paying staff reporters, servers and hosting costs. Other ways to support Neowin The above not doing it for you, but still want to help? Check out the links below. Check out our partner software in the Neowin Store Buy a T-shirt at Neowin's Threadsquad Subscribe to Neowin - for $14 a year, or $28 a year for an ad-free experience Disclosure: An account at Neowin Deals is required to participate in any deals powered by our affiliate, StackCommerce. For a full description of StackCommerce's privacy guidelines, go here. Neowin benefits from shared revenue of each sale made through our branded deals site. -
Welcome to the 2023 GNU/Linux Desktops Thread! Posting Guidelines - Embedded images should be smaller than or equal to 1440x900 (preferably 1024x768). - The file size for image previews should be no larger than 750 KB. - Images linked externally should be no larger than 3 MB. - If you plan to img-embed your desktop, please try to keep it under 100k (It's recommended that you link it, externally). - Stay within the board rules, no matter how yummy you may believe it to be. - If you are going to quote, there isn't a need to quote an img-embeded picture - Just don't do it. Please just reference the post by page number/page link/etc. - The desktops thread is not to be used as a means to post images of a pornographic or otherwise provocative nature. We do not support a babes forum and neither will we in an unofficial capacity. Please help to keep the thread relevant and safe to browse for everyone. - The moderators of this forum reserve the right to edit or remove your posts as necessary so they may comply with our Community Rules and so that this thread remains on topic. - In the interests of keeping the thread on topic it is strongly urged that you format your posts in the following order: Themes: Name/where you got it (with link would be nice). Wallpaper: Name/where you got it (with link would be nice). Icons: Name/where you got it (with link would be nice). Programs: Name/where you got it (with link would be nice). For finding mystery wallpapers, consider using Google Images Reverse Search or Tineye.
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The Linux User's Toolkit for Discovering New Apps - Free download
News Staff posted a topic in Front Page News
The Linux User's Toolkit for Discovering New Apps - Free download by Steven Parker Claim your complimentary free guide, before the offer expires. By downloading this free guide, you agree to receive regular updates on the latest cool apps, product reviews, and giveaways from MakeUseOf. With a few exceptions, installing a Linux distribution is like checking into an all-inclusive resort. Your hardware works out-of-the-box, and you get an impressive selection of pre-installed software: from photo editing tools and multimedia players to email and chat clients, and even a full-blown office suite. But what if you want to replace one of the default applications, or try out some new Linux software? Well, you could always just Google it—and pray you won’t have to venture beyond the tenth page of results to find something usable. Or you could build yourself a list of reliable resources where you can quickly browse applications, search and sort them by various criteria, and easily download the ones you like. If the latter approach sounds more sensible, you’re at the right place at the right time, because today we’ll show you some tips on how and where to find new Linux applications. Download today! How to get it: Complete and verifiable information is required in order to receive this offer. If you have previously made use of these free offers, you will not need to re-register. While supplies last! Please ensure you read the terms and conditions to claim this offer. >> The Linux User's Toolkit for Discovering New Apps - Free download << Offered by MakeUseOf, view their other free resources. Limited time offer. We post these because we earn commission on each lead so as not to rely solely on advertising, which many of our readers block. It all helps toward paying staff reporters, servers and hosting costs. Other ways to support Neowin The above not doing it for you, but still want to help? Check out the links below. Check out our partner software in the Neowin Store Buy a T-shirt at Neowin's Threadsquad Subscribe to Neowin - for $14 a year, or $28 a year for an ad-free experience Disclosure: An account at Neowin Deals is required to participate in any deals powered by our affiliate, StackCommerce. For a full description of StackCommerce's privacy guidelines, go here. Neowin benefits from shared revenue of each sale made through our branded deals site. -
Linux Certifications - Free Cheat Sheet by Steven Parker If you want to be certified for Linux and level up your career but are pressed for time, read on. This is a spreadsheet that summarizes the most popular Linux certifications. In it, you’ll find: How long each certification lasts What exams you’ll have to pass in order to be certified The approximate cost of training required to become certified There are a lot of certifications, so here’s the perspective of Linux Training Academy Founder and Author, Jason Cannon: "I’m a fan of the distro-agnostic Linux Professional Institute LPIC-1 certification. However, if you know you’ll be primarily working with RedHat, the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) certification is a great place to start." Being certified is just one step on one path along the way. And there are MANY paths that will take you where you want to go. How to get it Please ensure you read the terms and conditions to download this resource. Complete and verifiable information is required in order to receive this free offer. If you have previously made use of these free offers, you will not need to re-register. Linux Certifications - Free Cheat Sheet Offered by Linux Training Academy | Limited time offer We post these because we earn commission on each lead so as not to rely solely on advertising, which many of our readers block. It all helps toward paying staff reporters, servers and hosting costs. Other ways to support Neowin The above not doing it for you, but still want to help? Check out the links below. Check out our partner software in the Neowin Store Buy a T-shirt at Neowin's Threadsquad Subscribe to Neowin - for $14 a year, or $28 a year for an ad-free experience Disclosure: An account at Neowin Deals is required to participate in any deals powered by our affiliate, StackCommerce. For a full description of StackCommerce's privacy guidelines, go here. Neowin benefits from shared revenue of each sale made through our branded deals site.
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Following exFAT improvements last year, Microsoft is adding XFS root file system to Mariner
hellowalkman posted a topic in Front Page News
Following exFAT improvements last year, Microsoft is adding XFS root file system to Mariner by Sayan Sen In December last year, Microsoft's exFAT on Linux received some really hefty gains in terms of performance thanks to Sony. Internal tests showed close to 60% gains in some instances. Speaking of file systems, Microsoft has now added support for XFS as root file system type for CBL-Mariner, which is Microsoft's Linux OS for Azure 1P services and edge appliances. The change was introduced with the latest version 2.0.20230426 for CBL-Mariner where the changelog notes "Adding XFS as a root filesystem type". Over on the pull requests section of the GitHub page, developer AZaugg has provided a summary of the change (via Phoronix): Summary Adding XFS support to the installer, as well as allow Mariner to boot XFS filesystems. Change Log Added XFS option to Mariner Installer Added fsck.xfs to initrd Added XFS module to grub Does this affect the toolchain? YES Test Methodology Build a new VHD and booted, confirmed root filesystem was running XFS On that note, other file systems on Linux are also getting performance improvements and optimizations. These include F2FS, Btrfs, and EXT4. Besides these, the Linux implementation of Microsoft's NTFS file system (NTFS3) is also set to receive optimizations. Here is the full changelog for CBL-Mariner version 2.0.20230426 if anyone is wondering: Add kata-containers-cc package Adding XFS as a root filesystem type Enable serial console for ISO installer Fix CVE 2022 37601 on webpack loader-utils integrated with webpack Fix CVE-2021-45985 on memcached and ntopng Fix uninstallation of InfluxDB package Patch CVE-2021-28235 for etcd packages Patch CVE-2022-2989 in podman Patch CVE-2022-3165 in qemu Patch CVE-2023-25173 and CVE-2023-25153 for k3s Patch embedded zlib package within boost to fix CVE 2018-25032 Upgrade bundled njs version in nginx to 0.7.12 to fix CVE-2020-19692, CVE-2020-19695 Upgrade bundled njs version in nginx to 0.7.12 to fix CVE-2020-19692, CVE-2020-19695 Upgrade k3s to 1.25.8 and 1.26.3 Upgrade k3s to v1.24.6 & add v1.25.5 Upgrade libyang to 2.1.55 to fix CVE-2023-26916 Upgrade moby-cli to 20.10.24 Upgrade moby-runc to 1.1.5 to fix CVE-2023-28642, CVE-2023-27561, CVE-2023-25809 Upgrade mysql to 8.0.33 address CVE-2023-21976, CVE-2023-21972, CVE-2023-21982, CVE-2023-21977, CVE-2023-21980 Upgrade nmap to version 7.93 to fix CVE-2018-25032 Upgrade tcl to 8.6.13 Fix CVE-2018-25032 Upgrade protobuf-c to 1.4.1 to fix CVE-2022-48468 - Kernel upgrade to version 5.15.107.1 Add nodejs18.spec to support nodejs 18 clang-16 and llvm-16: add new SPECS openssl: patch CVE-2023-0465 and CVE-2023-0466 You may find more details on its GitHub repository. -
Linux Mint 21.2 and LMDE 6 are to be available within a month of each other
zikalify posted a topic in Front Page News
Linux Mint 21.2 and LMDE 6 are to be available within a month of each other by Paul Hill It’s the start of the month which means the Linux Mint team has shared what it has been working on. This month it showed off some new notification and tooltip themes and explained a bit about the release schedule. It was also announced that there was an issue with secure boot and for the time being, new installs should be done with secure boot disabled. No ETA for the release of Linux Mint 21.2 and LMDE 6 has been published yet but they will release quite close to one another. LMDE is short for Linux Mint Debian Edition and a new one comes along following a major Debian release. Debian 12 is due in June so LMDE 6 should follow hot on its heels. According to the blog post, LMDE 6 will come out after Linux Mint 21.2 so we sort of get a rough estimate of the release time - somewhere around June. Linux Mint releases usually come after a 2-week beta period, so we’ll hear about that first. In recent years, the Mint team has been quite preoccupied with modernizing the Cinnamon desktop used by default in Linux Mint. This month, the company has decided to show off new tooltips and notifications that use the accent colours you’ve chosen. They are quite full-on and will definitely grate some people. Based on the comments section of the blog, some visually-impaired users already do not like the decision. They say the text is too difficult to read. One of the users that complained about the new notifications and tooltips suggested that they should be optional. This would be a good enhancement as it would give users more control over their desktops. Only time will tell if that gets implemented. Finally, for anyone out there who is planning to install Linux Mint, it’s recommended to turn off secure boot. It seems Canonical updated Ubuntu’s shim-signed package that enables secure boot and now Ubuntu derivatives aren’t working with secure boot. The Linux Mint team is working on a fix for future ISOs but for now, just disable secure boot. -
Debian 11.7 releases with the latest security updates by Paul Hill The Debian Project has released the seventh point release for Debian 11 “Bullseye” bringing it to version 11.7. There are no new features with this update, just bug and security fixes for popular (and lesser-known) packages. If you are already running Debian 11, just apply the latest updates and you will then be running Debian 11.7. If you were thinking about installing Debian 11 on your computer and have already downloaded one of the older point releases, just install that. As long as you do post-install updates you’ll be on Debian 11.7, so there’s no need to create new installation media. If you are trying to install it on an offline device, then it’s worth grabbing the latest ISO. Some of the packages that have received fixes in Debian 11.7 include Flatpak, LibreOffice, the Linux Kernel, MariaDB, NVIDIA graphics drivers, systemd, Firefox ESR, Thunderbird, Chromium, Emacs, Java, Git, Rails, and many more. For a full list, check out the announcement. Debian 12 “Bookworm” is slated for release in mid-2023. It will jump from Linux 5.10 to Linux 6.1, bringing support for more hardware. It should get security updates until July 2026 before being maintained by the LTS team which will keep it alive until June 2028.
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It's not just Microsoft's Windows 11, Linux is also getting more Rust-y
hellowalkman posted a topic in Front Page News
It's not just Microsoft's Windows 11, Linux is also getting more Rust-y by Sayan Sen While not an official announcement, a senior Microsoft employee revealed recently that Rust code will soon be at the heart of the kernel as the tech giant looks to improve Windows 11's security. Internal testing, so far, has shown promising results,and it could be on its way to Insiders in just a few weeks time. Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Linux is also getting some improvements to Rust. The latest Linux patches reveal that kernel version 6.4 is getting more optimizations which will help to reduce the need for "unsafe" code. The patch says: More additions to the Rust core. Importantly, this adds the pin-init API, which will be used by other abstractions, such as the synchronization ones added here too: - pin-init API: a solution for the safe pinned initialization problem. This allows to reduce the need for 'unsafe' code in the kernel when dealing with data structures that require a stable address. There are many more additions in the pipeline and they can be viewed in the pull request here. Aside from Rust, both Windows 11 and Linux are also getting some decent improvements in terms of file system performance. While there is ReFS to look forward to on the Windows side, Linux is getting some good improvements on F2FS, Btrfs, EXT4, as well as unofficial NTFS. Source: LKML via Phoronix -
Following F2FS, Btrfs, EXT4 performance boosts, Linux is also getting some NTFS improvements
hellowalkman posted a topic in Front Page News
Following F2FS, Btrfs, EXT4 performance boosts, Linux is also getting some NTFS improvements by Sayan Sen A couple of days ago, we reported about some of the most popular Linux file systems getting significant performance boosts. These included Flash-Friendly File System (F2FS), B-Tree Filesystem (Btrfs), and fourth extended filesystem (EXT4). For example, in the case of Btrfs, SATA SSDs are showing around a 10% improvement with recent patchwork. Alongside these, it looks like NTFS on Linux is also getting some optimizations and improvements with the NTFS3 driver. This Linux implementation of Microsoft's NTFS file system is developed by the Paragon Software Group. You can find details about Paragon's NTFS3 here. Coming back to the patch itself, it has some improvements for NTFS3 like optimizations, some fixed logic errors, code cleanups, as well as removal of a couple of features that don't work: Added: add missed "nocase" in ntfs_show_options; extend information on fails\errors; small optimizations. Fixed: some logic errors; some dead code was removed; code is refactored and reformatted according to the new version of clang-format. Removed: noacsrules option. Currently, this option does not work properly. Its use leads to unstable results. If we figure out how to implement it without errors, we will add it later; writepage. These changes are meant to land in the Linux kernel version 6.4. Source: LKML via Phoronix -
Windows 11's WSL 2 does fairly well against native Ubuntu, most of the time
hellowalkman posted a topic in Front Page News
Windows 11's WSL 2 does fairly well against native Ubuntu, most of the time by Sayan Sen When AMD first revealed its Ryzen 7000X3D processors, the company promised new chipset drivers optimized for Windows. The drivers were released a month later and as the Santa Clara company had promised, we saw major performance per watt improvements, as the flagship Ryzen 7950X3D completely blew Intel's i9-13900K out of the water. Phoronix tested the 8-core, 16-threaded Ryzen 7 7800X3D recently on Ubuntu and compared it against Windows 11. While it was a close-fought battle overall, Ubuntu managed to come out on top. Following that, it was time to look at the performance of Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) to see how well it did against Ubuntu. Just like when it was tested back in 2021 with original Windows 11 21H2, WSL put up a decent show as it mostly traded blows did fall behind in some scenarios. For example, in x265 video encoding, it was far behind native Ubuntu, both 22.04.2 LTS and 23.04. A similar situation was seen in MariaDB database benchmark. However, it was also faster in memcaching tests. Here's how Phoronix concluded the comparison: For many different practical workloads, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) performance continues looking quite nice on Microsoft Windows 11. Overall it was a fairly pleasant experience with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on WSL2 with the latest Windows 11. For many workloads there is similar performance to running bare metal Linux if due to corporate protocols or other reasons you are otherwise stuck to be using a Windows host. Plus Microsoft continues extending WSL2 functionality for supporting graphical/3D applications, video acceleration, and other functionality too. You can find more details on Phoronix's website. -
Following Windows ReFS improvements, Linux getting F2FS, Btrfs, EXT4 performance boosts
hellowalkman posted a topic in Front Page News
Following Windows ReFS improvements, Linux getting F2FS, Btrfs, EXT4 performance boosts by Sayan Sen Microsoft has been gradually expanding support for ReFS (Resilient File System) in recent Windows 11 Insider builds. First noticed back in January, a hidden feature inside Dev build 25281 would allow users to install Windows 11 on a ReFS volume. The company has since added more ReFS-based features like "Dev Drive" VHD volumes. Microsoft also updated the underlying ReFS version to 3.10 in one of the recent Canary channel builds. While the use of ReFS on Windows grows, Linux on the other hand is also making some steady progress on some of its file systems. From some of the recent Linux kernel patches, it seems some of the most popular Linux file systems, Flash-Friendly File System (F2FS), B-Tree Filesystem (Btrfs), and fourth extended filesystem (EXT4), are getting significant performance boosts. For example, Btrfs is getting around a 10% performance boost on SATA SSDs. Perhaps the improvement on NVMe drives may even be higher: Always read in 64KiB block size The real blocksize of read starts at 64KiB, and ends at 512K. This already results a better performance even for the worst case: With patchset: 404.81MiB/s Without patchset: 369.30MiB/s Around 10% performance improvement on an SATA SSD. Moving on to EXT4, there are a number of optimizations in place: There are a number of major cleanups in ext4 this cycle: The data=journal writepath has been significantly cleaned up and simplified, and reduces a large number of data=journal special cases by Jan Kara. Ojaswin Muhoo has replaced linked list used to track extents that have been used for inode preallocation with a red-black tree in the multi-block allocator. This improves performance for workloads which do a large number of random allocating writes. Thanks to Kemeng Shi for a lot of cleanup and bug fixes in the multi-block allocator. Matthew wilcox has converted the code paths for reading and writing ext4 pages to use folios. * Jason Yan has continued to factor out ext4_fill_super() into smaller functions for improve ease of maintenance and comprehension. Josh Triplett has created an uapi header for ext4 userspace API's. Finally, here are the improvements on F2FS: Enhancement: support non-power-of-two zone size for zoned device remove sharing the rb_entry structure in extent cache refactor f2fs_gc to call checkpoint in urgent condition - support iopoll Overall, it looks like Linux kernel version 6.4 will be quite decent in terms of performance. Source: LKML (1) , (2) , (3) via Phoronix -
Microsoft drops licensing restrictions for cloud use on Windows Server 2022
Ishtiaqe Hanif posted a topic in Front Page News
Microsoft drops licensing restrictions for cloud use on Windows Server 2022 by Ishtiaqe Hanif Microsoft just updated the licensing terms for its Windows Server products. It brings a big change for Windows Server 2022 clients. The product terms pages only show a table as seen below. It did not offer any description or reasoning accompanied by the table. To get more information, you must select the specific product and go through a plethora of terms. The folks at Cloudy With a Chance of Licensing and Licensing School have decoded the in-depth terms and found three noteworthy changes: Removing the minimum requirement of 16 core licenses for using virtual machines or the Azure Hybrid Benefit Allowing customers to match the actual core count of their VMs to the licensed cores, instead of grouping them in multiples of eight Allowing customers who license Windows Server through a subscription from a cloud service provider to use Standard licenses with Datacenter VMs Windows Server is now licensed per physical core. With the Flexible Virtualization plan, customers can license the number of cores they want to use in the virtual machines. Microsoft is also opening doors to sales of longer-term hosted solutions for better price stability. It goes up to a three-year subscription plan. These changes are driven by Microsoft's aim to defend its Windows Server revenue, which is facing competition from open source alternatives. Its developers even admit to Linux being used more in its own Azure servers than Windows Server. Microsoft did not share a press release about the matter, however it seems to be a direct challenge in lowering licensing costs to pose a stiffer competition to rival offerings. You can learn more about the licensing terms here. -
Intel working on new Meteor Lake L4 cache for faster next-gen Windows, Linux, Chrome booting
hellowalkman posted a topic in Front Page News
Intel working on new Meteor Lake L4 cache for faster next-gen Windows, Linux, Chrome booting by Sayan Sen Intel's Meteor Lake processors, which are the 14th Gen Core CPUs, are expected to arrive by the end of the year, or early next year. A rumor had suggested that Intel and Microsoft were aligning the launch of desktop Meteor Lake-S (MTL-S) CPUs right around Windows 12. However, there hasn't been much evidence of MTL-S at all in terms of leaks, which means we likely aren't getting next gen Windows at least until the middle of next year. So although it means we are still a year away, Intel's new patent has revealed details of a new Level 4 (L4) cache dubbed "Adamantine" or "ADM" (via Phoronix), which is being designed to achieve "Slimmer And Faster Boot". Intel says they are seeing 300-350ms of additional reduction in boot times on ChromeOS, though there is no stat related to Windows 11 or Windows 12 at the moment. This explains the "Faster" bit. As for the "Slimmer" bit, the use of L4 cache as SRAM is also enabling Intel to design the firmware with a lighter footprint. Here are some of the points the patent notes regarding faster booting: [0088] Embodiments use design requirements described in FIGS. 3 and 4, which make larger and faster memory available at reset and modify firmware flows to use that pre-initialized memory rather define FSP flow to ensure secure SoC boot without being dependent over DRAM resources. [0089] Additionally, embodiments make use of a multi-threaded environment at the pre-boot stage to achieve faster system boot where security enforcement can be run over parallel threads along with another independent IO initialization. [0137] Improve significant boot performance--Able to reduce additional .about.300-350 ms of booting time on latest CHROME platform. [0138] Help to design lightweight firmware using an L4 cache as SRAM, which conducts minimum and only key functional blocks with FSP (e.g., SoC Silicon initialization blob) and bootloader methodology to boot to OS. The patent is available on the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website (via VideoCardz). If you recall, Intel had done a similar thing with its 5th Gen Broadwell which packed 128MB of eDRAM. However, Broadwell utilized it for graphics (GT) while the new Adamantine (L4) cache is made for processors. -
Ubuntu 23.04 arrives with improved Azure Active Directory support and Steam snap
zikalify posted a topic in Front Page News
Ubuntu 23.04 arrives with improved Azure Active Directory support and Steam snap by Paul Hill Canonical has announced the latest version of the popular Ubuntu operating system. With Ubuntu 23.04 “Lunar Lobster”, users benefit from a new desktop installer called Subiquity, better Azure Active Directory support, and an improved gaming experience. Desktop users also benefit from all the improvements that are present in GNOME 44 such as quick settings. Let’s start with gaming, in Ubuntu 23.04, the Steam snap package has been promoted to the stable channel. Now that Steam comes as a snap (this is going to be controversial), gamers can play their games without additional PPAs. It comes with 32-bit libraries and the latest Mesa drivers to bring the latest updates with impacting system stability. Some users think snaps are too slow to load, so this decision could make some people unhappy. Another change in this update is authentication support in Azure Active Directory. According to Canonical, Ubuntu is now the only Linux distribution that provides native user authentication with Azure Active Directory. This feature allows Microsoft 365 Enterprise users to authenticate their Ubuntu desktops using the same credentials they use for M365 or Azure. Canonical said IT admins should evaluate the ‘aad-auth’ feature in this release ready for a backport to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS which is planned for later in the year. There are also some new features for Active Directory in Ubuntu 23.04, they include support for enterprise proxy, app confinement, and network shares. These will be backported to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS later this year. Finally, if you don’t like GNOME, even with all the new features that come with GNOME 44, you can use another flavour. Ubuntu 23.04 adds two new flavours, the Cinnamon and Edubuntu flavours. You can download the latest version of Ubuntu now from the company’s download page. You can upgrade from the Update Manager, but first, go to Software & Updates > Updates > Notify me of a new Ubuntu version: For any new version. Once you’ve picked this option, check Update Manager. -
Tails 5.12, a privacy-oriented operating system, comes with improved persistent storage
zikalify posted a topic in Front Page News
Tails 5.12, a privacy-oriented operating system, comes with improved persistent storage by Paul Hill Privacy-focused internet users can now install Tails 5.12 on their USB sticks. The new update focuses on improvements to the persistent storage feature. Now, if you ever decide to disable persistent storage, you’ll see a delete data button to claim more space on your USB. If you are creating a new persistent storage, a random six-word passphrase will be suggested. The six-word passphrase that’s now generated for persistent storage is great because it’s quite easy for a human to remember. This means you’re not likely to lose access to your data. For hackers that try to brute force access, it would take 3,505 years to gain access if you performed one trillion guesses per second. This type of passphrase is generated with something called the diceware method. If you decide you don’t want to keep documents and folders stored on your Tails USB stick, you can switch off persistent storage and easily delete the data with the new delete data button that appears when you switch off the feature. The developers have also improved an error message when persistent storage fails to activate so that it’s a bit more helpful. Other notable mentions in this update are the inclusion of the latest Tor Browser release, version 12.0.5, and the inclusion of Linux 6.1.20. The updated kernel brings support for more graphics cards, Wi-Fi cards, and more. If you already have Tails 5.0+ on a USB, you will be offered the upgrade when you connect to the internet. You can also head to the Tails website and follow the instructions to do a clean install. -
Fedora 38 arrives with GNOME 44 desktop and new spins by Paul Hill The Fedora Project has announced the availability of Fedora 38. The main new feature in this update is that the Workstation edition uses GNOME 44. GNOME 44 includes a new lock screen, improvements to accessibility settings, and a new background apps section on the quick menu. There are new Spins including Fedora Budgie, Sway, and Sericea. There’s also a version for mobile devices now which is described as an early effort. For anyone out there who loves efficiency, this update brings a shorter default timeout for shutting down services. This means that powering off the systems should be faster, so if you’re in a hurry to go somewhere, you can get going quicker. Another performance improvement is the inclusion of dnf5. It’s not the default yet but it will be in future Fedora releases; it includes a smaller memory footprint and performance improvements. One of the key audiences of Fedora is developers. With Fedora 38, several important programming languages and system library packages have been updated. In this release, we have gcc 13, Golang 1.20, LLVM 16, Ruby 3.2, TeXLive2022, PHP 8.2, and “many more”. If you’re running Fedora 37, you can upgrade to Fedora 38 by opening Software, heading to Updates, refreshing, applying available updates, and then proceeding with the upgrade. If you’d like more detailed instructions or want to see other upgrade methods, check out the documentation. Alternatively, you can download a brand new ISO from the refreshed Fedora website.
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Linux vs Windows 11 2023: AMD Ryzen 7800X3D gets clear victory on Ubuntu
hellowalkman posted a topic in Front Page News
Linux vs Windows 11 2023: AMD Ryzen 7800X3D gets clear victory on Ubuntu by Sayan Sen Ryzen 7800X3D packaging When AMD first revealed its Ryzen 7000X3D processors, the company promised new chipset drivers optimized for Windows. The drivers were released a month later and as the Santa Clara company had promised, we saw major performance per watt improvements, as the flagship Ryzen 7950X3D completely blew Intel's i9-13900K out of the water. AMD released the 16-core 7950X3D and 12-core 7900X3D first, and this was later followed by the 8 core variant, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Just like its predecessor, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the 7800X3D turned out to be one of the best gaming CPUs, though it fell behind in productivity. Phoronix took the 7800X3D for a spin and tested the recently released processor on Linux and compared it against Windows 11. The testing was conducted on Ubuntu 23.04. The full specs of the test bed are given below: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO motherboard 2x 16GB DDR5-6000 memory AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics 2TB Solidigm P44 Pro NVMe SSD A total of 80 tests were run natively and the 7800X3D on Ubuntu managed to outdo its Windows 11 Pro counterpart in 72 benchmarks. In the overall scheme of things, Linux (Ubuntu) was around 7% faster as the the Windows 11 system received a GeoMean score of 50.62 against 53.98 on Ubuntu. In case you are wondering how the 7800X3D does on Linux against other CPUs, the application performance of the the X3D CPU is just a little bit behind the Ryzen 7700X: You can find the full test details on Phoronix's website at the links below. Source and images: Phoronix (1) , (2) -
Steam's new Proton 8.0-1 supports Forspoken and a long list of other games
zikalify posted a topic in Front Page News
Steam's new Proton 8.0-1 supports Forspoken and a long list of other games by Paul Hill Steam’s in-built compatibility layer, Proton, has received an update bumping it to version 8.0-1. Most notable is the added support for 18 more games; among them are Forspoken and Dead Space (2023). There is also a long list of improvements and fixes too such as improved multi-touch support. The full list of new games in this update is as follows: Forspoken Samurai Maiden Dead Space (2023) Creativerse Nioh 2 - The Complete Edition One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 Atelier Meruru Atelier Lydie & Suelle The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book DX Blue Reflection Atelier Rorona The Alchemist of Arland DX Disney Dreamlight Valley ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS XIV ToGather:Island WARRIORS OROCHI 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition Exceed - Gun Bullet Children Gungrave G.O.R.E. Chex Quest HD As for other improvements, the changelog reads as follows: Fixed 2K launcher failure caused by launcher update. Fixed Arabic fonts in FIFA 21 and 22. Improved CJK font support in many games including NOBUNAGA'S AMBITION: Souzou with Power Up Kit, Stardom 3 and Sword and Fairy 3. Improved sleep/resume functionality on Steam Deck for Tiny Tina's Wonderland. Improved multi-touch support. Fixed native scrollbar being always visible in Final Fantasy XIV Online launcher. Fixed A Plague Tale: Innocence and A Plague Tale: Requiem showing on-screen keyboard when starting the game on the Steam Deck. Fixed rendering issues during cutscenes in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell. Fixed Japanese keyboard input in Final Fantasy XIV Online. Fixed Football manager 2023 crashing when trying to return from a player profile. Fixed experimental regression: Fall in Labyrinth started crashing on some setups. Improved CJK characters rendering in many games including NOBUNAGA'S AMBITION: Souzou with Power Up Kit. Fixed Life is Strange Remastered crashing at the end of chapter 2. Fixed Alt+Tab not working on Gnome 43. Improved force feedback compatibility for BeamNG and Forza Horizon 5. Fixed regression with Mortal Combat X performance. Fixed OpenGL launch option for Youropa. Fixed raytracing in Crysis Remastered. Improved multiplayer support in Company of Heroes III. Improved fullscreen support for The Last Blade 2. Fixed regression: Minecraft Dungeons was hanging when disconnecting from multiplayer game. Fixed Immortals Fenyx Rising missing/out-of-order audio lines in cutscenes. Fixed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launcher flickering on Wayland. Fixed Story Mode not working in Dead or Alive 6. Enabled nvapi for many games. Updated wine to 8.0. Updated dxvk to v2.1-4-gcaf31033. Updated vkd3d-proton to v2.8-84-g08909d98. Updated dxvk-nvapi to v0.6.2. Updated wine-mono to 7.4.1. To use Proton 8.0-1 in Steam, press Steam in the menu and go to Settings. From there, go to Steam Play and under Run other titles with select Proton 8.0-1. According to the notes, you can only use this version of Proton if your GPU supports Vulkan 1.3. -
Ubuntu Livepatch for HWE Linux kernels coming soon by Paul Hill Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has announced that Hardware Enablement (HWE) kernels will receive updates via the Livepatch service, just like Long-Term Release (LTS) kernels. The first kernel to gain support will be Linux 6.2 which will ship with Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster next week before being made available as an HWE kernel in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS in July. For those not familiar with Livepatch, it’s a service available to customers with an Ubuntu Pro subscription. If you don’t have a subscription it can be enabled on five of your personal machines. With this enabled, you are able to get the latest kernel updates installed on your computer without having to reboot. Linux kernel updates are one of the very few packages that typically require a restart in Ubuntu but with Livepatch there’s no need to restart. With HWE kernels, users of the more stable Ubuntu LTS releases get support for the newest hardware. New HWE kernels typically arrive around the time of Ubuntu point releases following the launch of an interim Ubuntu release, such as 23.04. If you decide to enable Livepatch as a result of this news, there’s another major benefit. Out of the box, Ubuntu LTS releases are supported for five years. By turning on the Ubuntu Pro features, you automatically extend the support of your Ubuntu LTS system by another five years, bringing the total to 10. If you have Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and switch on Ubuntu Pro, you could keep getting updates for your system until 2032, by which time, at least four more LTS releases will have been made available.
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How to view CPU usage, battery health, and memory usage in ChromeOS Flex
zikalify posted a topic in Front Page News
How to view CPU usage, battery health, and memory usage in ChromeOS Flex by Paul Hill Most Chrome power users know that the browser ships with a barebones task manager that lets you track CPU and memory usage, and this carries over into ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex too. But, did you know that in ChromeOS Flex, there’s actually a slightly more powerful way to monitor CPU and memory usage as well as see the health of your laptop’s battery? In this guide, I’ll show you how to access these slightly buried tools. To open up these tools, open up the Settings app in ChromeOS or ChromeOS Flex and head to About Chrome OS at the bottom of the left-hand pane. From there, open up Diagnostics in the main portion of the window. Here, you’ll see three sections, Battery, CPU, and Memory. Each of these sections shows additional information too and there are buttons to run respective tests. In the battery section, you can see how full the battery is, the battery's health, the cycle count, and information about the current. Under CPU, you can see your CPU ID, a graph tracking usage of each user and the system, the current usage, the temperature, and the current speed. Finally, in the memory section, you can see how much memory has been used up and how much is available. Hopefully, these pointers will be useful to people with a new Chromebook or to those who are testing out ChromeOS Flex for the first time and are wondering where these important tools are. The task manager accessible from More Tools in the browser is useful for closing down troublesome tabs but it’s not very good for giving an overview of the system’s performance. Hopefully, with these diagnostic tools, you can better track your system’s performance. -
PSA: It's now possible to set up a ChromeOS Flex USB on Linux systems
zikalify posted a topic in Front Page News
PSA: It's now possible to set up a ChromeOS Flex USB on Linux systems by Paul Hill A little over a year ago, Google released ChromeOS Flex for PCs and Macs. One very annoying decision that Google took at the time was that installer USBs had to be set up using the Chromebook Recovery Utility which is incompatible with Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Unless you had another system lying around, Linux users had to make do without being able to write ChromeOS Flex to a USB. It’s unclear when, but in the time since release, Google has decided to allow people to download the installer image and write it to a USB using the dd command-line utility on Linux devices. The command is not very user-friendly but if you’ve managed to get yourself set up with Linux, you should be pretty capable of working out how to write the image to a USB. To get started, you can follow the instructions on the Google Support pages. You’ll need to download the image as a ZIP before unpacking the BIN file which is a big 6.9 GB file so ensure your USB device is at least 8 GB. Once that’s done, you’re ready to go ahead with the command that Google lists in step 4B. Be sure to update the command to point to the correct file (you can drag and drop the file into the terminal and the path will be entered automatically). You also need to know the USB’s identifier, you can find this by selecting the USB in the Disks utility, it should be something like sdb and ignore any numbers following it such as sdb1. On a slower USB 2.0 device, you might be waiting for half an hour for the image to write to the USB so opt for a USB 3.0 device if you have one. The operation needs to write 6.9 GB of data to the USB and the command Google provides will let you track this. Once it’s finished, the command line will say so, avoid the temptation to interrupt the process, it may look like it has crashed, but it hasn’t, just be patient. If you install the file available now onto a device, make sure you head to the settings to upgrade the operating system. The available image is ChromeOS Flex 107 but you can upgrade to version 112 after you've installed ChromeOS Flex. If you don’t manually upgrade, the operating system will soon update by itself. -
Save big on this 2023 Complete Raspberry Pi & Arduino Developer Bundle
News Staff posted a topic in Front Page News
Save big on this 2023 Complete Raspberry Pi & Arduino Developer Bundle by Steven Parker Nine lifetime courses and 61 hours of content on everything Raspberry Pi! Today's highlighted deal comes via our Online Courses section of the Neowin Deals store, where you can save 96% off this 2022 Complete Raspberry Pi & Arduino Developer Bundle. This bundle consists of the courses listed below: Raspberry Pi & Arduino: The Next Level Make Your Raspberry Pi Communicate with Arduino & Build More Apps Around This Bridge ROS2 for Beginners Master the Key ROS Concepts to Create Powerful & Scalable Robot Applications Learn ROS2 as a ROS1 Developer & Migrate Your ROS Projects Create Complete ROS2 Applications & Migrate a ROS1 Code Base in ROS2 Raspberry Pi For Beginners: Complete Course Build Amazing Projects with Raspberry Pi 4 Using Python 3, GPIOs, Flask & More Arduino for Beginners: Complete Course Master Arduino Starting from Zero — Learn with Hands-On Activities & Many Arduino Projects Arduino OOP (Object Oriented Programming) Learn How to Use OOP with Arduino Through a Step-by-Step Project Practical Python: Learn Python 3 Basics Step-by-Step Get Started with Python 3 by Getting On-Hand Lessons & Practices of the Basics Practical C++: Learn C++ Basics Step-by-Step Get Started Quickly with C++: Only Hands-On Lessons & Practice to Master C++ Basics Practical Linux Command Line: The Basics You Really Need Get a Strong Linux Command Line Foundation Quickly in Just a Few Hours Learn the basics and dive into hands-on coding and programming.Here's the deal: The 2023 Complete Raspberry Pi & Arduino Developer Bundle normally costs $1,800, but can now be yours for just $69.99, for a limited time, that's a saving of $1,730 (96%) off! For specifications and instructor info please click the link below. Get this Raspberry Pi & Arduino Bundle for $69.99 More Neowin Deals. Although priced in U.S. dollars, this deal is available for digital purchase worldwide. We post these because we earn commission on each sale so as not to rely solely on advertising, which many of our readers block. It all helps toward paying staff reporters, servers and hosting costs. Other ways to support Neowin The above deal not doing it for you, but still want to help? Check out the links below. Check out our partner software in the Neowin Store Buy a T-shirt at Neowin's Threadsquad Subscribe to Neowin - for $14 a year, or $28 a year for an ad-free experience Disclosure: An account at Neowin Deals is required to participate in any deals powered by our affiliate, StackCommerce. For a full description of StackCommerce's privacy guidelines, go here. Neowin benefits from shared revenue of each sale made through our branded deals site. -
As Microsoft expands Windows 11 ReFS, Rufus alternate Ventoy gets high-capacity NTFS support
hellowalkman posted a topic in Front Page News
As Microsoft expands Windows 11 ReFS, Rufus alternate Ventoy gets high-capacity NTFS support by Sayan Sen Microsoft has been gradually expanding support for ReFS (Resilient File System) in recent Windows 11 Insider builds. First noticed back in January, a hidden feature inside Dev build 25281 would allow users to install Windows 11 on an ReFS volume. The company has since added more ReFS-based features like "Dev Drive" VHD volumes. Microsoft also updated the underlying ReFS version to 3.10 in one of the recent Canary channel builds. While the development around ReFS is impressive, support around NTFS still goes strong as Ventoy, which is a popular utility used for making bootable media similar to Rufus, has now gained the ability to recognize greater than 64kB cluster sizes. What this essentially means is that Ventoy can now read volume sizes greater than 256TB (NTFS goes all the way up to 8PB on Windows 11 and Windows 10 version 1709 and newer). Speaking of NTFS, a Fedora boot error related to the file system has also been fixed. Here is the full changelog for Ventoy version 1.0.91: Ventoy 1.0.91 changelog: Add support for FreeBSD 14-CURRENT. Fix the issue for booting Bliss OS 15.x Fix a bug that Fedora boot error if Ventoy partition is NTFS. Add Recognition for NTFS with large cluster size (greater than 64KB). Improve grub2 mode process for legacy BIOS mode. languages.json update. You can download the software from Neowin or from Ventoy's official website. -
Ubuntu 23.10 beta and final release dates unveiled in newly published schedule
zikalify posted a topic in Front Page News
Ubuntu 23.10 beta and final release dates unveiled in newly published schedule by Paul Hill Canonical has published the release schedule for Ubuntu 23.10, which doesn’t yet have a codename but will utilize the letter M for the adjective and noun, for example, Mellow Manatee. The two most important dates on the schedule are the beta release date and the date of the final stable release. On September 18, Canonical will institute a beta freeze on Ubuntu 23.10 so that hardly anything changes in the run-up to September 21 when the beta is issued. The public will be invited to try out the beta release and supply feedback on issues encountered so they can be addressed before the final release a few weeks later on October 12. As a non-LTS version, Ubuntu 23.10 will be supported for just nine months. This is great for people who want to keep their computer up-to-date with all the latest goodies Ubuntu has to offer but people who don’t like doing regular upgrades are better off sticking with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS until Ubuntu 24.04 LTS arrives in April 2024. For those who do want to jump on these latest releases, Canonical is due to release Ubuntu 23.04 on April 20. The beta was released at the end of March so you can give that a whirl if you like but be warned that there could still be issues.
