The Xen Project has unveiled version 4.18, showcasing continued growth in both technological advancements and community contributions. The release emphasizes expanded hardware support and feature enhancements across various architectures.

Key Highlights:

• Enhanced ARM Support: Notable additions include the Scalable Vector Extension (SVE), Arm Firmware Framework (FF-A), and an improved memory subsystem, signaling substantial progress in ARM architecture support.
• x86 Architectural Improvements: Extensive support for features in AMD Genoa and Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs, coupled with advancements like the Protection Key Supervisor (PKS) and bus-lock detection, enhances security and performance on Intel and AMD systems.
• RISC-V and Power Ports: Demonstrating a commitment to diversity, initial ports for RISC-V and Power architectures have been introduced, promising intriguing developments in subsequent releases.
• New Hypercalls and MISRA-C Adoption: The release introduces new hypercalls and an increased adherence to MISRA-C rules, bolstering the project’s robustness and versatility.

Community Initiatives: Ongoing projects and future plans within the Xen community include continuous improvements in ARM MPU support and PCI-passthrough, refining RISC-V support, and focusing on the ppc64le architecture with Radix MMU page table initialization, paving the way for broader PowerPC support.

For further details, refer to the official announcement.

ZFS on Linux (OpenZFS), the open-source implementation of the ZFS file system and volume manager, has released an important update, version 2.2.1. Users are recommended to update to this release, especially if they are currently running 2.2.0, to avoid the block cloning bug. Users running older versions of ZFS are unaffected by this issue.

Changes in version 2.2.1 include:

• Disabling block cloning by default to fix a block cloning bug that could result in data corruption
• Adding a tunable to disable BRT support
• Auto-generating changelog during configure for packaging
• Compatibility updates for Linux 6.6
• Various bug fixes and optimizations

Supported Platforms:

• Linux: compatible with 3.10 - 6.6 kernels
• FreeBSD: compatible with releases starting from 12.2-RELEASE

For more information and to download the latest release, visit the OpenZFS GitHub page.

AMD has announced that it has extended ROCm and PyTorch support to the Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics card. This comes ahead of AMD’s Advancing AI event, which is scheduled for early December.

Last month, AMD announced ROCm 5.7 and PyTorch support for the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and the Radeon PRO W7900 GPUs. This marked the first official support for ROCm/PyTorch on RDNA3 graphics cards. Now, the support has been expanded to include the Radeon RX 7900 XT. AMD has only provided ROCm support for the 7900 level products, with no official communication regarding support for lower-end Radeon RX 7000 series and Radeon Pro 7000 series products.

Source: Phoronix.

Prusa3D, a leading 3D printing company, has recently launched four new recycled PLA filaments with biobased pigments. This launch comes after the success of their previous recycled filaments, which demonstrated a strong demand for environmentally-friendly 3D printing materials. The company is committed to sustainability and believes that using recycled materials is both beneficial and worthwhile.

The new Prusament rPLA Natural Pigments are unique in that they feature more pleasant and subtle colors, making them suitable for various home decor and similar purposes. The filaments are made using waste materials and organic pigments sourced from food and pharmaceutical industries. This eco-friendly approach to coloring is an excellent alternative to the traditional processes used in filament production.

The first batch of four colors includes:

1. Prusament rPLA Algae Pigment: This brown filament is made from a byproduct of a Czech company that uses red algae in pharmaceutical production.
2. Prusament rPLA Wine Pigment: This filament features a unique Bordeaux color derived from grapes. The pigment is obtained from a waste byproduct of the winemaking process.
3. Prusament rPLA Corn Pigment: This beige/yellowish filament gets its color from processed corn. It is made from recycled corn material.
4. Prusament rPLA Rissoto Pigment: This filament has a creamy white color and is made from various food leftovers. The material undergoes a complex process to ensure it is free from microorganisms.

Unlike previous recycled filaments, which utilized Prusament manufacturing waste, these new filaments are made purely from recycled materials. The company purchases PLA foil manufacturing waste from an external supplier to create the pellets for the filaments.

The Prusament rPLA Natural Pigments filaments have slightly different properties compared to regular PLA. They are slightly more brittle, making them more suitable for printing visual parts rather than functional ones. The colors may also slightly change over time and with different batches, resulting in unique shades. In terms of printability, these filaments are not particularly difficult to print but require some adjustments. It is recommended to lower the nozzle temperature to avoid stringing and oozing. Additionally, due to the use of organic pigments, a slightly more prominent scent may be noticed during printing, although it is non-toxic. The filament is compatible with popular 3D printers, including Prusa3D’s Original Prusa i3 MK3S+.

To prevent stringing, it is important to keep the filament dry, as the rPLA is more hygroscopic than regular PLA. Storing the filament in a dry box or drying it at 45 °C for 6 hours before printing can help mitigate this issue.

The new Prusament rPLA Natural Pigments filaments are available in 1 kg spools, with each spool costing $30.99 USD/34.99 EUR (including VAT). These filaments offer an eco-friendly and visually appealing option for 3D printing enthusiasts who are conscious of their environmental impact.

The Banana Pi BPI-M4 Zero is a small computer board that closely resembles the Raspberry Pi Zero in size and shape. However, it offers some notable differences, such as dual USB-C ports instead of micro USB ports and a more powerful processor.

The BPI-M4 Zero features an ARM Cortex-A53 quad-core processor, 2GB of LPDDR4 memory, and 8GB of eMMC flash storage. It also includes a Raspberry Pi-compatible 40-pin connector, making it compatible with a wide range of accessories.

Compared to the Raspberry Pi Zero, the BPI-M4 Zero boasts a 1.5 GHz Allwinner H618 processor, which is the same chip used in another Raspberry Pi Zero clone, the Orange Pi Zero 2W.

In terms of ports and connectors, the Banana Pi model includes a mini HDMI 2.0a port, two USB Type-C ports (one with support for 5V/3A power input), a microSD card reader, a 24-pin FPC connector (supporting USB 2.0, 100 Mbps Ethernet, and IR), a 40-pin header, and a WiFi 5 & BT 4.2 module. The board also features two status LED lights, a wireless antenna, and two hardware keys functioning as a reset button and a FEL button.

Measuring 65 x 30mm, the BPI-M4 Zero should fit in most cases designed for the Raspberry Pi Zero or similar boards.

Pricing and availability for the Banana Pi BPI-M4 Zero have not been announced yet. However, it is expected that the board will be priced under $20, which is typical for this kind of device.

Source: Liliputing.

FreeBSD 14 has been released as the newest major release of the open-source BSD operating system. After a few minor release delays, FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE is now officially available. FreeBSD 14 is the last series for this OS project supporting 32-bit systems. FreeBSD 15 will drop support for 32-bit hardware platforms although FreeBSD 15 64-bit systems will retain support for running 32-bit binaries. That 32-bit binary compatibility is expected to be supported at least through FreeBSD 16.

FreeBSD 14 also adds a new “fwget” utility for fetching firmware packages. The fwget utility initially can get firmware for Intel and AMD GPUs. FreeBSD 14 goes on to replace sendmail with dma, OpenZFS 2.2 provides the latest ZFS file-system support, Kinst as a new DTrace provider, makefs adding ZFS support, boottrace is a new interface for capturing trace events during system boot and shutdown processes, the kernel TLS offloading handling receive-side offloading of TLS 1.3, initial WiFi 6 support in WPA, sh is now the default shell for the root user, and an updated LLVM toolchain.

FreeBSD 14 on ARM64 and AMD64 now supports up to 1024 CPU cores, up from the current limit of 256 cores. FreeBSD 14 should also reboot faster, ISA sound card support was removed, and there is a new Intel QAT driver with more features and support than the prior FreeBSD QAT driver for QuickAssist Technology. Netflix also sponsored the removal of many other old drivers from FreeBSD.

FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE is a great step forward for getting this BSD operating system running on the latest hardware and making other improvements as we approach 2024.

More details and downloads for FreeBSD 14.0 can be found on FreeBSD.org.

Source: Phoronix.