• Updated AMD Zen CPU Microcode Lands In Linux-Firmware Tree

  But as is often the case with new additions to linux-firmware.git, the changes to said microcode/firmware binaries aren't usually described in any level of detail. Though with this Zen CPU microcode update it ultimately shouldn't mean too much assuming you are punctual with your motherboard firmware updates that generally ship with the new AMD CPU microcode revisions, in which case the older (in-tree) firmware isn't loaded.

• RADV Lands More Fixes + Performance Improvements Into Mesa 19.3

  It's always great waking up and to find RADV improvements in Mesa Git for this open-source Radeon Vulkan driver that is particularly popular with Linux gamers.

  Hitting Mesa 19.3 overnight was re-enabling fast depth/stencil clears with separate aspects for GFX10/Navi. This was disabled before for causing "weird issues" on GFX10 but no longer appears to be the case. This path also works fine when tested with Feral's new Shadow of Mordor Vulkan beta.

• AMD Joins The Blender Foundation With An Emphasis On Vulkan

  Just earlier this month NVIDIA announced their funding of the Blender Foundation at the flagship "patron" level and now AMD has followed them in backing this foundation for assisting the development of this leading 3D creation software.

  AMD now joins NVIDIA and Epic Games at the patron level, which means contributing at least €120k per year to the foundation.

• AMDVLK 2019.Q4.1 Vulkan Driver Brings Performance Tuning, Reworked Pipeline Cache

  AMD has been off their weekly release regiment for their open-source AMDVLK Vulkan driver but this morning they issued their first new release in just about one month.

  AMDVLK 2019.Q4.1 is this first AMDVLK source drop for the fourth quarter. Given the four weeks since the last Linux Vulkan driver source update, there have been many changes/improvements. Some of the large work items include supporting host mapped foreign memory (VKI_EXT_HOST_MAPPED_FOREIGN_MEMORY), reworking of its Vulkan pipeline cache and other cache improvements, and tuning the shader performance for F1 2017 and The Talos Principle.

Tor Browser is fully installed (9.0)
System upgrade from Debian Buster repos as of October 22, 2019
Update Thunderbird to 60.9.0.1
Update Onionshare to 2.2
Update firmwares to 20190114-2
Update openjdk-11-jre to 11.0.5
Update youtube-dl to 2019.10.16

• RAMburgulars | LINUX Unplugged 324

  Is the ZFS tax too high? We pit ZFS on root against ext4 in our laptop pressure cooker and see how they perform when RAM gets tight.

  Plus we take a look at Pop!_OS 19.10, complete our Ubuntu 19.10 review, cover community news, and lots more.

• 2019-10-22 | Linux Headlines

  The GNOME Foundation fights back in its patent battle, Firefox 70 is here, and Ghost has its biggest release yet.

• Episode 85 | This Week in Linux

  On this episode of This Week in Linux, we have a jam packed episode with BIG releases from Ubuntu, KDE Plasma, antiX 19, RPM and more. We’ve also got some really interesting news from a BSD based project that is migrating to Linux. We’ll also cover an interesting security topic regarding SUDO that has been making the rounds recently. Samsung announced the end of Linux on DeX and Google finally is releasing AMP to the community. Later in the show we’ll check out a really cool Linux client for Playstation 4 Remote Play and some new Humble Bundles. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

• mintCast 320 – Sudos and Sudon’ts

  First up, in our Wanderings, Leo plays with audio, Moss tries out two new System76 laptops, Josh has been oggcamping, Joe’s been headphoning, And Tony has been updating a laptop for a friend.

  Then, in our news we talk about Ubuntu, Google’s most disappointing pixel yet (the Pixel 4), Linux Mint’s gaming ability, and the releases of Freespire, Tails and Trident.

• Nathan Wolf: Noodlings | BTRFS, Ultra Widescreens and Floppy Drives

  I have been using BTRFS on all of my openSUSE machines without issue. In my quest to build a new multi-roll system to act as a server, workstation and occasional casual desktop use, I wanted to have a storage solution that was very fault tolerant and would allow me to expand my disk size with minimal effort. That is in both replacing individual drives with larger drives and potentially adding another controller card to have more drives.

  ZFS is in the news as the new “hotness” for a file system and it does indeed have a lot of the really awesome features BTRFS provides, maybe more but support in Linux doesn’t appear to be as robust as BTRFS. Could my mind change in the future? Absolutely, but for now, until I get the stability of BTRFS on root, the snapshot system and the ease of flexibility in altering the array of storage, I will stick with BTRFS.

In the classic story The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen, a bird is bullied and tormented by a bunch of mean ducks -- simply because his appearance is different, and he is perceived as ugly. Spoiler alert: he grows up to be a beautiful swan and has the last laugh. Take that, mean ducks! In many ways, Linux users have been like that bullied bird -- made fun of for being different, but as time marches on, it is clear that they are the true swans of the computing world.

And so, how appropriate that MX Linux 19, which is released today, is code-named "Patito Feo," which is Spanish for ugly duckling. Yes, following some beta releases, the increasingly popular Debian 10 Buster-based distribution is finally here. The operating system features kernel 4.19 and uses the lightweight Xfce 4.14 desktop environment. It even features a patched sudo, so you don't need to worry about that nasty security vulnerability that had some folks worried. Of course, there is a bunch of great software installed, such as Firefox 69, Thunderbird 60.9, LibreOffice 6.1.5, VLC 3.0.8, GIMP 2.10.12, and more!