The Most Interesting Features Of The Linux 4.14 Kernel

[indepe]

I sincerely hope Linux never ever supports "binary drivers", ...

I'm not talking about supporting binary drivers in the sense of them becoming part of the kernel, if that's what you mean. They should not be inside the kernel.

Many distributions do support binary drivers, especially Ubuntu, which may be one of the reasons it is popular on the desktop.

Maybe there should be distributions that do not support binary drivers and applications at all, for those who want that. (Maybe there are already, I don't know.) However the rest would be well advised (on the desktop) to do a much better job of "unconditionally" supporting them across all those distributions that do. For example, AMD's binary driver runs only on a few select distributions, even though AMD as a company obviously doesn't mind adjusting to the needs of the OS.

[jrch2k8]

To me it sounds more like things were changed underneath nvidia's software that caused it to look like it was using something that it doesn't actually need.

In general, I think it is simple: As long as Linux doesn't fully support binary hardware drivers and applications, it will remain a small niche system. Otherwise it could become an important operating system that is a true alternative.

I sincerely hope Linux never ever supports "binary drivers", I know some of you may think this could be a good thing but in reality this will generate such a horrible mess that any of you in favor of this madness will come back crying blood begging Linus to revert it ASAP. how I know this? because I worked with enough ARM devices that use BLOB drivers that if tomorrow AMD or Intel release a price competitive x86 APU/SoC device that is competitive enough(I consider 50% slower and 2x more power consumption as a great deal, I hate ARM that much) I will offer every customer to exchange their current devices for the x86 one even if I have to pay for the difference just to regain some peace of mind.

Please notice I'm talking about the "good" ARM providers like Qualcomm SoCs, don't even ask me about Chinese SoCs(note "good" means absolutely horrible POS in the ARM world, while Chinese means "absolutely unbearable unstable broken POS")

Lets not even touch the horrible mine field named Android(in the sense of utterly broken unmaintained security challenged driver mess).

Even in windows is a mess where the same chipset can have 50 drivers all broken in 50 different ways and all exploitable in 50 different ways.

Sure, I guess a regular user don't care as long as his thingies work and get FPSSSSSSSSes but man for that you have windows. this "great idea" will probably break Linux in the same way broke windows and pushed you to Linux in the first place(<--- see the irony?)

[indepe]

Ehhh, that's not what the devs said. It's using that interface, it should not use that, the situation is tolerated because fighting over this would be worse for all, but any breakage of their own out-of-tree driver is their own problem, just as with every other out-of-tree driver.

They said that nvidia can fix that simply with "CONFIG_AMD_MEM_ENCRYPT=n", so that's why I said it looks like nvidia uses something, but doesn't actually need it.

[indepe]

your brain is dead and produces stupid thoughts. for many years already linux is the most used operating system overall and in each particular market except desktop. and even in declining desktops market the only growing division is linux desktops(chromebooks)

The context was the nvidia driver, so yes, I was talking desktop. That's "my" area. (Since Android has its own branch I need an extra reminder to think of Android.)

[pal666]

I don't understand what "Caching the leftmost node" does. It seems about block devices.

red-black tree is node-based data structure

[pal666]

In general, I think it is simple: As long as Linux doesn't fully support binary hardware drivers and applications, it will remain a small niche system.

your brain is dead and produces stupid thoughts. for many years already linux is the most used operating system overall and in each particular market except desktop. and even in declining desktops market the only growing division is linux desktops(chromebooks)

[Hi-Angel]

I think some kind of explanation for non-programmers would be useful.

I don't understand what "Caching the leftmost node" does. It seems about block devices.

It's an optimization for traversing interval trees. Interval tree is a computer science model for storing intervals (e.g. sentence "Godzilla should be within 10 ±3 miles to north" uses an interval 7..13), and for quickly finding overlaps. I never had a chance to use it, so I don't have any practice-backed examples of applications, however by looking the changeset in the end of the mail you can see it is used in many places of kernel — memory subsystem, graphics drivers, file-system drivers, schedulers. Also the fact that before this patchset some users have cached the leftmost node internally points out there is an actual demand.

[starshipeleven]

I am also excited about this patchset. Looks like a cool optimization, especially if look the areas it's influencing in the changeset. it's already commited to the soon to be released 4.14.

I think some kind of explanation for non-programmers would be useful.

I don't understand what "Caching the leftmost node" does. It seems about block devices.

[Hi-Angel]

I am also excited about this patchset. Looks like a cool optimization, especially if look the areas it's influencing in the changeset. it's already commited to the soon to be released 4.14.

[starshipeleven]

To me it sounds more like things were changed underneath nvidia's software that caused it to look like it was using something that it doesn't actually need.

Ehhh, that's not what the devs said. It's using that interface, it should not use that, the situation is tolerated because fighting over this would be worse for all, but any breakage of their own out-of-tree driver is their own problem, just as with every other out-of-tree driver.

As long as Linux doesn't fully support binary hardware drivers and applications, it will remain a small niche system. Otherwise it could become an important operating system that is a true alternative.

It's not going to compete with Windows on PC anyway due to purely economical or legacy reasons, so if by "true alternative" you are talking of PC, then forget it. Only way for Linux to get on PC is when Windows is weak or irrelevant enough, regardless of technical decisions.

Meanwhile its model and flexibility has allowed it to conquer or keep a strong presence pretty much everywhere else, in quite remunerative areas too.

OEMs can adapt fine to Linux if they wanted to, the same as they adapted to obey Microsoft's and Intel's "law" on standards, interfaces, drivers and whatnot.