news
Graphics and Kernel: Bugs, Tiny Compiler, and More
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SQ Magazine ☛ Critical Linux pedit COW Bug Gives Hackers Instant Root Access
Security experts recommend installing a patched kernel and rebooting affected systems immediately.
If patching cannot be performed right away, organizations can: [...]
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Andrew Healey ☛ A Tiny Compiler for Data-Parallel Kernels
My compiler lowers kernels (rewrites them into a simpler, more explicit form where data parallelism is visible). The input is a small hand-written AST, and the output is a lowered IR that I print as Python-like code. Rather than going all the way from source code to instructions, think of this compiler as an intermediate step in a larger compiler.
Let's take a look at an example. Scaling audio is easy to parallelize, but it is still common to write non-explicitly parallel code like this: [...]
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University of Toronto ☛ Some things on 'systemctl kexec' as compared to 'kexec -e'
Suppose, unfortunately not hypothetically, that you have some machines that the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS installer kernel sometimes gets a kernel oops during a network based reinstall (we don't think this is a hardware flaw, but who knows; these machines were stable on 24.04). Further suppose that you're not network booting these machines but instead you're using kexec to boot them into the installer environment. This creates an awkward situation, where the over the network installer may have gotten far enough before the panic to have written over enough of the disk (with the previous install on it) so you can't reboot from it. Fortunately there is a way out, because you can contrive to kexec the installer environment again from within the installer environment.
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Graphics Stack
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GamingOnLinux ☛ DXVK 3.0 brings lots of improvements for Windows games on Linux / SteamOS | GamingOnLinux
DXVK is part of the secret sauce that helps Valve's Proton to run so many Windows games exceptionally well on Linux, and DXVK 3.0 brings some big advancements.
Be sure to check out our classic interview with the creator of DXVK for some history on it.
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