Linux Kernel News Archives


3,283 Linux Kernel open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

Linux Preps Hybrid SMP Fix To Avoid Upcoming Laptops Appearing As 11 Socket Monsters
Linux Preps Hybrid SMP Fix To Avoid Upcoming Laptops Appearing As 11 Socket Monsters

A fix is on its way to the mainline Linux 6.4 kernel and also marked for back-porting to existing stable kernel series to fix x86 topology reporting for Intel Hybrid systems. The topology bug within the kernel becomes more pronounced for Meteor Lake laptops where currently internal Intel test laptops can report the systems having 11 CPU sockets rather than the proper number of cores all contained within one CPU socket.

26 May 2023 - Hybrid SMP Topology Fix - 8 Comments
Big Throughput Boost & Lower Latency With New Patch For Linux Checksum Function
Big Throughput Boost & Lower Latency With New Patch For Linux Checksum Function

Queued up ahead of the Linux 6.5 cycle kicking off in about one month is a new Linux x86 optimization patch for further tuning csum_partial, the function used within the kernel for calculating 32-bit checksums on blocks of data. Much lower latency and higher throughput can be observed with the newly-optimized csum_partial on the latest Intel/AMD processors.

26 May 2023 - csum_partial - 13 Comments
Patch Posted For Formally Deprecating The SLAB Allocator
Patch Posted For Formally Deprecating The SLAB Allocator

Following the recent removal of the SLOB allocator, SLAB is the latest on the chopping block. In order to push users to the SLUB allocator as the preferred solution, SLAB is now going through its deprecation and eventual removal process.

24 May 2023 - CONFIG_SLAB_DEPRECATED - Add A Comment
Linux Adding Leakshield Driver Support For Reporting Liquid Cooling System Leaks
Linux Adding Leakshield Driver Support For Reporting Liquid Cooling System Leaks

There is pending patches for adding support for the LEAKSHIELD device to the Aquacomputer Linux device driver. German PC component manufacturer Aquacomputer has been enjoying support for their various products on Linux and the latest seeing support in this open-source driver is the Aquacomputer Leakshield for reporting any water cooling leaks and other performance metrics around your cooling setup.

21 May 2023 - Aquacomputer Leakshield - 16 Comments
Parallel CPU Bring-Up Poised For Linux 6.5
Parallel CPU Bring-Up Poised For Linux 6.5

Months in the making have been the patches for x86_64 parallel CPU boot support to allow secondary CPU cores to be booted in parallel for shortening Linux kernel boot times. Over time the Linux parallel CPU bring-up patches have gone through many revisions while it looks like this work is now positioned for introduction with the Linux 6.5 kernel later this summer.

16 May 2023 - Faster Boot Times - 10 Comments
Linux Patches Updated For Parallel CPU Bring-Up
Linux Patches Updated For Parallel CPU Bring-Up

While missing out on the recently-closed Linux 6.4 merge window, one of the patch series seeing a lot of activity in recent weeks/months has been around parallel CPU bring-up in order to speed-up the Linux kernel boot process for today's high-end desktops and many-core servers.

9 May 2023 - Parallel CPU Bring-Up v3 - Add A Comment
New Patches Aim To Tackle Linux x86_64 PIE Support
New Patches Aim To Tackle Linux x86_64 PIE Support

Going back years there has been patches for allowing the Linux x86_64 kernel to build as Position Independent Executable (PIE) code to further enhance the system security. Antgroup engineers most recently have been tackling the Linux x86_64 PIE support and last week sent out a new patch series.

7 May 2023 - Position Independent Executable - 7 Comments
Linus Torvalds Cleans Up The Intel LAM Code In Linux 6.4
Linus Torvalds Cleans Up The Intel LAM Code In Linux 6.4

While these days Linus Torvalds is mostly dealing with herding new code into the Linux kernel and being a gate keeper rather than actively developing new kernel code himself, for the in-development Linux 6.4 he's found himself doing a bit of coding.

6 May 2023 - Torvalds Cleans Up LAM - 1 Comment
LoongArch With Linux 6.4 Lands Optimizations, New Functionality
LoongArch With Linux 6.4 Lands Optimizations, New Functionality

Chinese tech company Loongson continues working on improving the upstream Linux kernel support for their MIPS-derived, RISC-V-inspired domestic CPU architecture. With the in-development Linux 6.4 kernel is another batch of optimizations and implementing more kernel functionality for the LoongArch CPU architecture.

5 May 2023 - Linux 6.4 + LoongArch - 11 Comments
Linux 6.4 Delivers A Big Performance Boost For VDUSE
Linux 6.4 Delivers A Big Performance Boost For VDUSE

Merged last week for the Linux 6.4 kernel were all of the VirtIO and Virtual Data Path Acceleration (VDPA) changes. Interesting from that pull request is delivering a big performance bump for VDUSE.

1 May 2023 - Linux 6.4 VDUSE / VirtIO / VDPA Changes - 4 Comments
Linus Torvalds Cleans Up The x86 Memory Copy Code For Linux 6.4
Linus Torvalds Cleans Up The x86 Memory Copy Code For Linux 6.4

In recent years Linus Torvalds hasn't had the time to write too much original new code for the Linux kernel himself with these days mostly managing developers, providing insightful mailing list posts, and reviewing code for merging into the kernel tree along with related tasks. For Linux 6.4 though he did manage to write up some new code.

1 May 2023 - x86 Memory Copy - 7 Comments
Linux Has A New Firewire IEEE-1394 Maintainer - Intends To Maintain Support To 2029
Linux Has A New Firewire IEEE-1394 Maintainer - Intends To Maintain Support To 2029

It's likely been years since many of you have heard of Firewire and some readers likely never had the opportunity to use it. The Firewire interface was great back in the day and during the early period of digital video cameras, but modern versions of USB and Thunderbolt are far faster, allow longer cable distances, and numerous other advantages. While Firewire hasn't seen much activity in years and can be outpaced by USB 3.0 and beyond, there is a new Firewire subsystem maintainer for the Linux kernel and he intends to keep at it for the next six years.

27 April 2023 - Linux Firewire - 27 Comments
Reworked x86_64 Parallel Boot Support Posted For The Linux Kernel
Reworked x86_64 Parallel Boot Support Posted For The Linux Kernel

Being worked on for a while has been Linux kernel patches to speed boot times by allowing the parallel bring-up of CPU cores. There were AMD boot issues since worked around and the patches gone through multiple revisions for helping with Linux kernel boot times. Those patches continue to be improved upon and yesterday saw a reworked patch series posted.

15 April 2023 - Parallel Boot Speed-up - 11 Comments
Linux VGEM Driver Rewritten In Rust Sent Out For Review
Linux VGEM Driver Rewritten In Rust Sent Out For Review

Besides the ongoing work around the reverse-engineered Apple Silicon graphics driver being brought up in the Rust programming language, the other notable Rust effort within the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel subsystem is a rewrite of the basic VGEM driver in this increasingly-used programming language. That Rust VGEM driver has now been sent out on the mailing list for review as part of a request for comments.

21 March 2023 - Rust VGEM - 46 Comments
Linux 6.3-rc3 Released: It's "Fairly Big"
Linux 6.3-rc3 Released: It's "Fairly Big"

Linus Torvalds just released Linux 6.3-rc3 as the latest weekly test candidate for the in-development Linux 6.3 kernel that is slated to debut as stable toward the end of April.

19 March 2023 - Linux 6.3 - 2 Comments
Linux Kernel Networking Driver Development Impacted By Russian Sanctions
Linux Kernel Networking Driver Development Impacted By Russian Sanctions

The US and western government sanctions around the Russian government and its defense industry/companies due to their war in Ukraine has caused interesting issues in the open-source world. A few days after ipmitool was archived/suspended on GitHub that turned out to be due to the current maintainer's affiliation with a Russian tech company, separately there is now a blocking of Linux kernel contributions from selected Russian developers.

16 March 2023 - Your Contributions Not Welcome - 341 Comments

3283 Linux Kernel news articles published on Phoronix.