Linux News #06

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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Linux News 06

Gaming News

Because this round deserves its own section.

HITMAN Released

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Yup.

It's currently half price on the Feral store where you can get the first season (All 6 episodes).

You can see Gaming on Linux's port report here

This release also supports AMD on MESA 13.0.3.

Civ 6 Released

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This seems to be a decent port, performance is decent though not amazing, but not a big deal for the type of game it is. It officially only supports Nvidia, but unofficially works well on new AMD cards (likely requiring, amdgpu/radeonsi, openGL 4.3, LLVM 3.9)

You can see Gaming on Linux's port report here

Another Valve dev Working on MESA

So it seems a new Valve employee is now working on the AMD stack on Linux, bringing Valves apparent numbers to 3 developers working on AMD drivers.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Arceri-Joined-Valve

MESA 17 Released

Again another MESA release, again improvements to AMD GPUs. This release has improvements across the board, including Vulkan improvements, OpenGL 4.5 for Intel Haswell, Polaris 12 support, and more.

You can check out the full changes here

You can check the latest mesa features on mesamatrix, keep in mind, features may be implemented but not enabled or currently in your current distro.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=civ-vi-radeonsi

3k Linux Games on Steam

<3

What else is there to say? Bring on 2017!

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&category1=998&os=linux

Wine 2.2 Released

More continued improvements, I don't think there's any major feature additions. here's whats news

  • Windows version set to Windows 7 for new prefixes.
  • More steps towards the Direct3D command stream.
  • Still more Shader Model 5 instructions.
  • Initial support for double-buffered theme painting.
  • Various bug fixes.

https://www.winehq.org/news/2017021701

Its still a ways off newer directx support, but slowly getting there (who buys Dx only games anyway....)

You can check out the status of the wine api support here

Some Other Game Stuff

Sunless Sea

Sunless Sea has a free weekend, if you don't have it, its a good game

Windows vs Linux

Phoronix did a little comparision of Windows 10 vs Linux on RadeonSI/RADV Gaming. Its interesting, and I think shows how far things have come in such a short time since the new AMD graphics stack was released.

We have a discussins on it here

Normal News

Keynote: A Conversation with Linus Torvalds

Go watch the rest of the Open Source Leadership Summit 2017 if your interested.

Firefox flatpak versions, and Wayland versions

Some unofficial builds of Firefox making use of flatpak are available. These also include a wayland version of Firefox for those wanting to get things on wayland native.

I think this will be good to see more of. We'll likely see more flatpak support for packages as some distros start looking are replacing userland packages with flatpak versions.

https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/

Community

If you use Linux for media production, be it video, audio, art, photography, etc. tell use how you use your setup. @tkoham made a topic discussing media production and workflows in Linux.

@Miguel_Sensacion made a quick post about 20+ Linux books you can get your hands on for free.

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/20-free-ebooks-to-learn-linux-for-free/113134/

Something I missed? Post away!

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The Linux foundation events always make me uneasy...Not so much as content but as style...It just feels that the typical conferences of traditional businessmen. That are there just to find ways to economically exploit the FOSS production model while trying to exclude its genuine creativity potential and social significance.

EDIT: Although i must say the Torvalds segment was really good.

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One thing I noticed was the drivers fort he new AMD GPU cards. It's sad we wont see support right away for the new AMD GPUs coming out. It's a little bit of a repeat from the first release of amdgpu, but at the very least its being worked on and should be in by 4.12, or at least that's what they suggest.

If only they could put more people on getting the DAL code sorted.

@turin231 I think its always hit and miss sometimes. Some good things, some meh. Depends on what the goal is I guess. I much prefer more technical talks.

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I have a love hate relationship with WINE, I have found that on modern computers ( Haswell & up / FX -83++ ) virtualization is the way to go, at least for me. I just can't get over the issues I had with Adobe PS CS6 using the Pen tool... Arrrrrggggghhhhh !!!!! #RantOver :)

*hanks for the post acknowledgement @Eden , I'm sure someone will put it to good use.

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Well, I guess if you have the money the ultimate thing to do is virtualise with GPU pass-through. Wine is great for a lot of things, but its hard to catch up and implement all that api stuff voluntarily.

Its great for old stuff though, like dosbox, and similar projects.

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I liked his passion on community development and the more horizontal way on producing code compared to traditional hierarchy. It is always interesting to hear a true geek talking about his work no matter how much i agree or disagree with him...

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I might explore sandbox a wine application if that is even possible. I have been asked that this week several times, but I haven't looked into it. Are you aware of it being possible?

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What exactly is that MESA thing?

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It's a graphics API. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics)

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Well that's the thing isn't it. Similar to RMS almost everything they both say aren't necessarily invalid points. In fact most of the time they're correct on many, whether you like or dislike them or their opinions.

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Not sure what your asking? (Wording is funny for me) But no Ive no idea is probably the answer.

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Basically asking if you are familiar with sandbox the SELinux policy and running application in it? ie: Web Browser / WINE apps etc...

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If you want quick rundown howto use sesandbox maybe take a look at this, it's somewhere in the very end

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Maybe put this in the next one. Serious Sam VR Now has Linux support in beta.

And some other relevant news.