http://www.heise-online.co.uk/open/Kernel-Log-New-stable-kernels-AMD-3D-documentation-and-Mesa-7-3-released--/news/112506Kernel Log: New stable kernels, AMD 3D documentation and Mesa 7.3 released
Over the last two weeks, the kernel developers have released versions 2.6.27.11, 2.6.27.12 and 2.6.28.1 of the stable kernel and at the weekend they added versions 2.6.27.13 and 2.6.28.2. All of these versions incorporate corrections and minor improvements, including a whole set of patches, contributed by IBM's Heiko Carstens, to eliminate a security vulnerability listed as CVE-2009-0029 that is said to affect only S390, PowerPC, SPARC64 and MIPS architectures. A little earlier, Torvalds accepted similar changes (1, 2 and 3) into the main development tree. There were virtually no changes last week, because Torvalds was attending LCA 2009, where he spent some time with his "Tasmanian Devil" and tried his hand at hairdressing. Last night, following the week off, he resumed accepting changes for Linux 2.6.29, so 2.6.29-rc3 will probably appear next week. No Linux 2.8/3.0 Interviewed at the LCA, he again made it clear that he had no plans to go back to a development model with an unstable series (Linux 2.3.x, 2.5.x), but was happy with the current model and planned to continue further development of the 2.6 series. He also mentioned ZFS and Btrfs, source-code management systems, Windows 7, and his preferred Linux distribution, saying he had switched from KDE to GNOME because KDE 4.0 was "a disaster", even though just a few years ago he was still harshly criticising the GNOME team. Meanwhile, two short discussions have erupted on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) about the usefulness of the staging branch incorporated into the main development tree by 2.6.28 (integrated staging branch). The first question was whether file systems should be allowed into the staging area, as Greg Kroah-Hartman currently plans with DST (distributed (network) storage). After some tos and fros involving Andrew Morton and other kernel hackers, silence fell for almost a week, then Dave Jones brought the point up again in a thread that was by now growing rather cold. The concept of the staging area and the idea behind it were then criticised in general terms. Andrew Morton himself doesn't seem entirely sure that accepting it into the main development tree was a good idea. Some other recent discussions on the LKML revolved around SLQB (1, 2, 3) – a new memory management infrastructure that Nick Piggin thinks should replace the current memory managers SLAB and SLUB. When integrated into Linux 2.6.22, SLUB was really intended to be SLAB's successor, but it then turned out to have lower scores on some benchmarks. SLQB and SLUB developers are debating the detailed differences between their two new memory managers on the LKML. These are described in simple terms in an LWN.net article on SLQB. SLQB has recently been added to linux-next, so the chances are that Linux 2.6.30 will include it. Presumably, in the long run, two of the three memory managers will be eliminated. Mesa 7.3 The Mesa project has issued version 7.3 of its free OpenGL implementation for Linux and other Unix-like systems. This version, which is aimed at developers, will lead on to Mesa 7.4, which will then take over from version 7.2, currently the latest version for users. Apart from bug fixes, the innovations in 7.3 include support for GEM and DRI in Mesa code for Intel graphics hardware. Mesa now also implements OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) 1.2. The intention is now to prepare versions 7.5/7.6 in the main Mesa development tree. Gallium3D, the new architecture developed by Tungsten Graphics to ease the programming of support for 3D, will also be accepted. Work is currently in progress to get the Radeon graphics driver to support Gallium3D. The recently published "Nouveau Companion 42" reports that the developers of the experimental Nouveau open source 3D drivers for nVidia cards, are already working on Gallium3D. All about X.org Although the development of X server 1.6 seemed largely to have come to a halt at the end of the year, it sprang back into life in mid-month when the first release candidate (RC) was announced. Momentum was lost again last week when some key X.org developers went off to attend LCA 2009. The X.org programmers have completed the development of version 2.6.0 of the xf86-video-intel graphics driver package, usually known as "intel" for short, and shortly thereafter they followed this up with version 2.6.1. The drivers page lists some main innovations: support for HDMI audio, the DRI2 (Direct Rendering Infrastructure) for X Server 1.6 and the Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) accompanying Linux 2.6.28 (Linux 2.6.28's five best features - Computerworld Blogs). Rudimentary code for exploiting the 3D units of new AMD chips was
published a few weeks ago, and AMD's Alex Deucher has now announced the release of
a document In Brief
Further background and information about developments in the Linux kernel and its environment can also be found in previous issues of the kernel log at heise open:
Older Kernel logs can be found in the archives or by using the search function at heise open. (thl/c't) |
giving a more detailed description of the 3D register of the R6xx and
R7xx GPUs. That should make it easier to extend the 3D infrastructure,
including the Radeon and Radeon HD graphics drivers, to include 3D
support for Radeon cards in the 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000 series.- [linuxkernelnewbies] Kernel Log: New stable kernels, AMD 3D doc... Peter Teoh
- [linuxkernelnewbies] Kernel Log: New stable kernels, AMD 3... Peter Teoh
