OpenSUSE Adds Option To Installer For Toggling Performance-Hitting CPU Mitigations

[zxy_thf]

and how to you guarantee that? With a multithreaded web browser it can always possible to make use of hardware defects where threads aren't isolated correctly. And in doubt all Javascript code is untrusted.

For a desktop you never want to disable the mitigations. For some servers it might make sense to do so though.

I'm talking about servers, not desktops.

[starshipeleven]

For a desktop you never want to disable the mitigations. For some servers it might make sense to do so though.

Also for many embedded devices. Not that SUSE runs any significant amount.

[yurikoles]

This is good to see, and I'll bet they've built a YaST module too then, so you can make the same changes after installation.

The installer is YaST itself, so there is definitely a module for that.

[karolherbst]

This is a very welcome change! Those mitigations make little sense if only trusted code will be executed.

and how to you guarantee that? With a multithreaded web browser it can always possible to make use of hardware defects where threads aren't isolated correctly. And in doubt all Javascript code is untrusted.

For a desktop you never want to disable the mitigations. For some servers it might make sense to do so though.

[R41N3R]

Adding more options to an installer doesn't sound right to me, especially when it is already quite complicated like in the case of opensuse. This sounds more like a tuning option after install!

[Shiba]

before ubuntu even existed, suse was ubuntu.

I still have my boxed SuSE professional 9.0, it featured automount of usb devices! >

[Zinural]

I use openSUSE Tumbleweed with GNOME on an AMD computer

- Gnome (no Baloo)
- AMD (no expensive Spectre mitigation)
- XFS on the whole system (no Btrfs)

So I shouldn't have any major performance reductions compared to other distros and I also don't need to change the options for Spectre mitigation, is this right?

[RahulSundaram]

This is a very welcome change! Those mitigations make little sense if only trusted code will be executed.

That's not the case. "Trusted" code can have security vulnerabilities.

[noangel]

Nice to have such options to give user ability to select fast or secure. On some servers not connected to Internet it may be really helpful.

[tildearrow]

Disable per-process page tables for additional performance : ☑

At the risk of not being able to allocate memory after a few hours of uptime.

Let's run Linux on Amiga 1000