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vim on Git
by 90ur1 90ur1 30 May '19

30 May '19

Couldn't stop from sharing a screenshot of this , while installing Git on Windows : "...for historical reasons ..modern GUI.. " Gouri [image: Capture.PNG]

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Intel Bay Trail bug fixed in 5.3!
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 28 May '19

28 May '19

Bay Trail is a family of processors/SoCs introduced in 2013. They were ubiquitous. And they suffered hangs under Linux. <https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/codename/55844/bay-tra…> The work-around has been to turn off some power-saving capabilities, crippling the usefulness of these "low-power" chips. (I suspect most users never found the magic incantation to do this and so have just given up on running Linux on these systems.) I'm subscribed to the bugzilla entries. I just got a notification of the thousandth comment added to one. A kernel patch has been submitted by Intel and accepted for 5.3 (months away). The whole useful life of this SoC has been impaired. This patch is work-around code for a chip bug. The patch itself is restricted to "Valleyview" which is a name for something that covers all Bay Trail chips, and only Bay Trail chips. <https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109051> --- Comment #1000 from w2q(a)arcor.de --- I may cite Hans de Goede from this site: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/mobile-linux/1096936-intel-b… " Actually the Intel open-source devs have been working on fixing this and a patch-series which should improve things wrt this has been queued for merging into 5.3 (it just missed the 5.2 merge window), see: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/drm-intel/commit/?id=a75d035fedbdecf83f86767aa… " Yeah, comment 1000!

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Ryzen 3 Specs for Chipset and other details
by nick 27 May '19

27 May '19

Greetings, I'm sure some of you already know but ryzen 3 was announced today. I don't know all the details but the most interesting things are: * Native PCI Express 4 and USB 3.1 on the chipset not sure about GEN 2 * 64 Core Data Center Processors with hyper threading I'm assuming so 128 threads * Not been tested externally but IPC per core similar to Intel This is a link to the discussion on motherboards: https://hothardware.com/news/amd-x570-ryzen-3000-zen-2-motherboard-roundup Seems to be a interesting product stack, Nick

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the meaning of Core i[3579] (was: NUC NUC NUC)
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 27 May '19

27 May '19

TL;DR: Intel uses brands. We care about technology. Sometimes brands map cleanly onto technology, but sometimes they don't. You cannot trust that mapping. | From: Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> | Yeah the i7 is becoming very inconsistent in gen 9. A few high end | ones have kept SMT, while the lower end ones don't have it, but the core | count has gone up instead. I believe all i9 chips have SMT. Here's my inference on the matter (not based on careful research): - these names are brands, not technology - we (techies) want them to represent technologies. For example, we kind of know what "Core i5" means - when times are good, and changes are smooth, intel tries to align its brands with technologies - when Intel is desperate, they muddy the waters of their brands Example trajectory: - Pentium meant one thing. - Then it got extended with the II and III branding AND technologies. Still related, and the branding evolved in a coherent way - Then the Pentium 4 came along and it was something completely different - Pentium M was also technically different, but that was signified by a sufficiently different name (in my perception) - "Pentium" lay dormant for a bit, and then got attached to some Atom-architecture and low-end (crippled) Core chips. Talk about confusing! It became a pricing / value designator and not a technology. Intel is in trouble. It's latest fab processes (10 nanometer) are not coming on stream as quickly as they had planned and promised. Historically they have been significantly ahead of other fabs. Now they are behind and squirming visibly. This has thrown their whole roadmap off. The i9 seems to be a way of showing forward motion without needing the new fab processes. A way to appear to "refresh" their line without stressing their manufacturing capabilities. As far as I recall, they do have one 10nm product that they claim is shipping but it's not very good and so probably nobody is buying it. It is probably so expensive to produce (low yields) that they don't want anyone to buy it. It's a mobile chip without a GPU (probably due to yield issues) that isn't notably better than the normal 14nm versions that are shipping. Since 10nm isn't productive, they are shipping as much 14nm product as they can make. But it's not enough for the market. They didn't build up 14nm capacity because they thought they would be using 10nm fabs. Intel also has AMD as a competitor and threat for CPUs, something they could ignore for a long time. The upcoming "Rome" AMD server chip looks to be particularly scary. AMD is selectively using TSMC's 7nm technology (apparently comparable to Intel's 10nm -- don't get fooled by the number). In the eighth generation of Core, they moved some extra cores and HT down to lower-numbered models, probably to ward off the mild AMD threats. Perhaps to stimulate consumer excitement. In my mind, this happens to make the i5 a "sweet spot". And make the 8th gen fairly attractive (up until now, I've been content sitting at the 4th gen). But maybe the next one will better deal with the speculation problems. Don't count Intel out. Their server chips were inferior to AMD's Opterons for a long period but the server market didn't significantly switch to AMD. Then Intel technology caught up and surpassed AMD. ================ The term "microarchitecure" is used to describe how a chip is organized. The Core "microarchitecture" started with the Core 2 Duo branding. The "Core" branding before that had a different microarchitecture (32-bit). So confusing. Intel's current Core-brand processors (and XEON-brand too) are still based on an evolved Core microarchitecture. AMD's Zen microarchitecture is newish, and it is what has put them back into the game. When I talk about "Atom", I'm refering to microarchitecture. The branding of those products is way too hard to follow.

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Ontario Bill 72: "Right to Repair"
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 25 May '19

25 May '19

This is a private member's bill so it is unlikely to pass. <https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/what-on-earth-newsletter-right-to-repair…> <https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/b…>

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NUC NUC NUC
by Evan Leibovitch 22 May '19

22 May '19

Hi all, I'm looking to upgrade my PC that's served me well for about 8 years, but it's starting to be unreliable and I can't upgrade the RAM beyond 4GB. So I'm looking at a new desktop system that will be used mainly for many-tabs-open browsing and multimedia editing using openshot, audacity, etc. Of course must run Linux well. I am currently looking at two NUC-form-factor barebones systems that use the 8th gen Intel i7, an Intel model available through CC <https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=570_7_1203_1157&item…> and a Zotac model available from Amazon <https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B079H24SWZ/>. Both are about the same price. I would be installing 16GB RAM, an SSD and two screens. Can anyone offer any advice whether to go with one, the other, or neither? Are there better places to buy? Thanks for all suggestions. -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56

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Google suspends some business with Huawei
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 21 May '19

21 May '19

<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-alphabet-exclusive/exclusive…> This looks like it will affect Huawei Android phones. It looks like Google is being forced by the US Federal government. Google better move out of the US. To be honest, this looks like something so stupid that it's going to be changed.

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Q4OS anyone?
by Ken Heard 17 May '19

17 May '19

Hi, I am thinking of using the Q4OS operating system instead of Debian because Q4OS is one of two distributions which includes the Trinity DE which I have been using for some time with Debian. I would appreciate comments from anyone here who uses or has some knowledge of this OS. Regards, Ken

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a simple security solution?
by Karen Lewellen 17 May '19

17 May '19

Hi everyone, I do hope to ask this clearly. what I desire is a method of confirming if someone enters or approaches my flat without my knowledge. Ideally there would be a small camera, even a phone just for this role might work, with at the absolute best a notification sent via voice or e-mail that the feature is active..I hope this makes sense. Perhaps it activates when someone opens my downstairs door, letting me know? Perhaps an alarm, perhaps not. I might also dedicate a laptop to this role, but the most important thing is that I am notified, the setup calls my own phone number land line for example, or sends me an e-mail. I have no way to get a text message, unless this message is spoken. If I am not being clear let me know. Range need not be profoundly large either. Ideas? Kare

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Question Fodder: Bcache Filesystem
by Christopher Browne 15 May '19

15 May '19

I just saw a report of corruption problems with bcache in conjunction with GCC 9, and realized I had never actually heard of bcache before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcache - a layer in the kernel for using fast storage (e.g. - NAND, SSD) as a cache for spinning rust That's pretty cool; I don't have enough lurking SSD/NAND to have that be of *too* much interest. But wait, they kept working on it, so there's a filesystem... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcachefs - a COW (Copy On Write) filesystem running atop BCache that has the modern stuff people seem to like such as snapshotting, encryption, checksums, compression (ala ZFS, Btrfs) Here's the corruption reference: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=203573 And some more diagnosis here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1708315 Sounds like it may be the wrong moment in time to be adopting BCache-related stuff ;-) Has anyone been poking at this sort of stuff? A *loooong* time ago, I used to follow ReiserFS pretty closely, back when that project was a technical matter, as opposed to being (rather properly!) overshadowed by a murder investigation :-( -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

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