Summary week 38 of 2019

[cobito]

Here are the translated paragraphs from Spanish to English:

Linux 5.3 available

The latest version of the kernel has been marked as stable. Among other things, it includes support for AMD Navi graphics processors, Zhaoxin x86 processors, improvements in CPU management for asymmetric power, and a lightweight hypervisor for IoT devices.

Gentoo vs Debian

Security expert developer Daniel Miessler has published his opinion on the differences between Gentoo and Debian on his blog. Note that his favorite distro is Gentoo, although he does highlight the stability of Debian.

Thin or thick fans?

In this analysis by the people at Optimum Tech, two very different fans are compared: a Noctua NF-A12x25 and an EK Meltemi, the former with a thin profile and the latter thick. The result is that the Noctua fan is a better option.

Interview with Nvidia engineers

SemiEngineering has interviewed Bill Dally and Jonah Alben, two big names at Nvidia, about the future of GPUs. The interview focused on the role of graphics processors in artificial intelligence and autonomous driving.

Surface Laptop 3 could switch to AMD

This is just a rumor. The plan is to stick with Intel, specifically the Ice Lake architecture. However, there are whispers that for the 15" Surface Laptop 3, Microsoft is considering using Zen 2 to power its laptops.

Firefox VPN is now available to test

Yes, but only in the United States, probably because they use Cloudflare services. It's what they've called the "Firefox Private Network" and its beta phase is imminent. Basically, it's like a built-in VPN that is maintained by Mozilla. The test phase is free, although it's quite likely that it will end up being a paid service.

Improvements in high-DPI support in Qt 5.14

Probably the support for high-density pixel displays is still the weak point of the main desktop environments for Linux today. The framework on which KDE is built has improved support for these types of screens, and specifically, it's now possible to have windows with a ratio higher than the desktop's.

EPYC 7742 encodes 8k video in real time

An AMD heavyweight (64 physical cores with SMT) is the first CPU capable of encoding video at 8k resolution, with 10-bit depth, and HDR.

Richard Stallman leaves the FSF presidency

RMS has decided to leave both MIT and the FSF presidency. It seems that the controversy arose over his support for Epstein, from whom he was receiving millions in donations at the time.

Wi-Fi Alliance begins Wi-Fi 6 certification

Also known as IEEE 802.11ax standard, among other things, it incorporates new technologies like OFDMA that allows sharing channels to improve spectrum efficiency, MU-MIMO that improves download speed, and 160MHz channels, which results in higher speed.

Intel introduces new 10nm Atoms

The SoC based on Snow Ridge will be aimed at 5G base stations. These processors use a mesh architecture instead of the traditional ring bus. Actually, this type of bus was already introduced in 2016 in Skylake-SP and basically allows routing data through any part of the mesh.

Evolution of Windows control panels

This article reviews the control panels that have allowed managing and configuring Windows since version 1.0 in 1985 to the present day.

Mozilla and Creative Commons want an alternative to advertising

Funding content with small payments instead of using advertising has been under study for the past few years. Both the organization that produces Firefox and the one that manages free licenses have created a platform with a $100 million fund to offer a way to make micropayments to content creators.

PCIe Gen4 in video editing

At Puget Systems, they have published an article analyzing the impact of the fourth generation of PCIe on video editing. In theory, the new specification has double the bandwidth of the previous one. Keep in mind that at the moment only AMD's X570 chipset supports it, so they used an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X with a Radeon 5700XT. The result is that there are no appreciable differences between the two PCIe versions.

Tiger Lake will increase cache

It seems that one of the main quantitative improvements in the new 10nm architecture (replacing Ice Lake) will be an increase in the third-level cache. Specifically, Tiger Lake-U will increase this memory by 50%, from 8 to 12MB. It will also come with AVX512 instructions, although it won't be complete due to the lack of native support for bfloat16.

Linux 5.4 will improve EPYC support

To be more specific, it will improve load balancing between NUMA nodes in EPYC 2P servers.

EPYC 7302P analysis

EnServeTheHome has published an analysis of AMD's server range. This model has 16 cores with SMT and 128MB of L3 cache. As a preview, they have measured CPU consumption of 220W.

TSMC's 7nm is a hit

It seems that the semiconductor manufacturer is selling its node well. It's not just AMD; Apple wants its technology to manufacture the A13 in its new phones. So much so that delivery times are starting to stretch.

Windows update breaks WiFi

Microsoft has reported that the KB4515384 update could cause problems with WiFi connections. Specifically, Broadcom adapters have stopped working on Windows 10 version 1903.

Firefox speeds up its release cycle

Currently, Mozilla releases a new version of Firefox every 6-8 weeks. From now on, the cycle will be shortened to 4 weeks. This new policy will come into effect in early 2020.

Linux turns 27

Yesterday, the operating system turned 27. It all began when Linus Benedict Torvalds sent an email to Minix users saying he was working on an OS as a hobby and had no pretensions of becoming something serious like GNU. The system was made for his 386 and wasn't portable.

EPYC 7000 series comparison

Larabel has published a comprehensive comparison of several EPYC models on Linux. As usual, he used a multitude of programs covering a wide range of fields, so with the results, you can get a precise idea of the differences between these micros along with four Xeons used as a reference.

PulseAudio 13 comes with TrueHD and DTS-HD Master support

The new version of the server audio for Linux comes with support for two of the most popular standards in movie audio. It also adds support for new hardware and fixes some bugs. On the downside, it drops support for BueZ 4.

Opinions on Richard Stallman's departure

A few days ago, the free software world experienced a before and after with RMS's departure from the FSF and MIT. Of course, there has been controversy over this decision, especially considering that he was receiving donations from Epstein at the time. On Medium, an interesting article has been written about this event.

Why not buy a Gen4 NVMe SSD yet

The people at der8auer have published a video explaining why you shouldn't use these SSDs yet. In the case of Gigabyte, the hardware reaches temperatures close to 80°C and eventually stops working. It's clear that manufacturers still need time to release a product in good shape, and probably, those who have rushed in are too early.

Flight Simulator Alpha

As you may know, Microsoft broke its promise made back in 2006 that Flight Simulator X would be the last version of the flight simulation saga (forget about the infamous Windows 10 version). A few months ago, they announced a new version and now they have opened the possibility of testing the alpha.

Windows update breaks Windows Defender

It's a problem that comes with the KB2267602 update. The bug causes Windows Defender to terminate earlier than it should. Shortly after the problem was detected, Microsoft has released the KB2267602 update that should fix the issue.

Flight Simulator Alpha

)