Key component updates

With the update to Mesa 12.0, we've added support for OpenGL* level 4.3 and the Vulkan API for systems with a recent Intel GPU. In addition, this version of Mesa has significantly improved performance running on the latest Intel graphics hardware, as reported by the Phoronix news site.

The kernels in Clear Linux were updated to the latest stable versions, kernel 4.6.4 for the normal kernels, and 4.4.15 for the LTS kernels. As usual, the stable kernels contain "important updates".

The version of the emerging Rust* language was updated to 1.10.0. Version 1.10 adds several key language features, such as the panic triggers abort option and the new cdylib crate type. In addition, Rust can now be built and bootstrapped using the previous official version of Rust.

All of the Clear Linux package sources are now available as git trees. Visit https://github.com/clearlinux-pkgs to view the package sources and patches. These git trees will be regularly updated when new releases are made available, so that interested people can use them for their own purposes.

Performance

This week, we increased Caffe machine learning framework by 10 percent by improving our linear algebra library and by increasing the use of SSE and AVX vector instructions. Caffe is one of the top 5 ML frameworks in the industry, and its performance is one of our PNP focus areas.

The Phoronix "7-Way Linux Distribution Comparison For Summer 2016" article exposed a performance issue in gaming/graphics in our graphics stack. Recently, we traced the root cause of this issue to a bug in the XFWM4 compositor. Currently, a short-term workaround is deployed while the search for a sustainable long-term solution continues.

Noteworthy additions

We've started publishing images that are pre-configured to run in the Microsoft HyperV* hypervisor or in the Microsoft Azure* cloud.

Component highlights

The following components changed between release 9130 and 9310:

• Updated components:
  • beignet 5-9
  • ciao 15-19
  • firefox 47.0.1-11
  • freetype 2.6.4-26
  • geany 1.28-5
  • git 2.9.1-66
  • httpd 2.4.23-70
  • libgd 2.2.2-17
  • libusb-compat 0.1.5-5
  • linux 4.6.4-245
  • linux-hyperv 4.6.4-33
  • linux-kvm 4.6.4-176
  • llvm 3.8.1-14
  • LVM2 2.02.160-60
  • memcached 1.4.28-20
  • nasm 2.12.02-18
  • neon 1.5.3-5
  • nginx 1.11.2-28
  • nodejs 6.3.0-17
  • procps-ng 3.3.12-28
  • psutil 4.3.0-18
  • rustc 1.10.0-15
  • thunderbird 45.2.0-2
  • vim 7.4.1989-31
  • xorriso 1.4.5-7