The Linux 6.9 kernel has a big rework to the CPU timer code that has been years in the making and has some power and performance benefits.
Linux Kernel News Archives
3,491 Linux Kernel open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.
A slew of new Linux stable kernel point releases were issued today, driven in part for getting out the Intel Register File Data Sampling "RFDS" mitigations for the kernel code as part of this week's disclosure and microcode updates and kernel patches.
The Virtual Function I/O (VFIO) updates for the Linux 6.9 merge window bring a mostly mundane assortment of driver patches and other routine changes. But there is a new driver for NVIDIA's Grace-Hopper superchip.
The EFI updates were merged today for the ongoing Linux 6.9 merge window. This cycle the EFI kernel code is seeing enhancements for confidential computing as well as for satisfy Microsoft's requirements for getting them to sign the x86 shim loader again for UEFI Secure Boot handling.
The Linux work around atomic consoles and threaded printing remains ongoing. This work is particularly interesting as it's the last major blocker before real-time "RT" kernel support can land. This work sadly isn't ready for the new Linux 6.9 cycle but at least some printk clean-ups are landing for issues discovered during the atomic consoles effort.
David Airlie has submitted all of the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display driver updates today for Linux 6.9.
The recently covered overhaul of the x86 CPU topology code to clean-up quite a code mess has been merged for Linux 6.9. Among other benefits, this improved topology code properly accounts for modern Intel Core hybrid systems with a mix of P and HT-less E cores.
A "request for comments" patch series was posted on Monday for a new dynamic kernel stacks feature for Linux. Early testing has shown the potential for significant memory savings.
Linus Torvalds has gone ahead and released Linux 6.8 as stable today rather than drawing this cycle into overtime.
Depending upon how Linus Torvalds is feeling today, Linux 6.8 could debut today as stable and in turn mark the opening of the Linux 6.9 merge window... Otherwise it will be punted off by one week. In any event, there's a lot of interesting work queuing for Linux 6.9 as shared in today's preview.
All of the Rust feature patches have already been submitted in a pull request to Linus Torvalds ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.9 merge window.
Linux 6.8 could debut as stable as soon as tomorrow if all goes well... Linus Torvalds last week was unsure whether an extra release candidate would be needed after the quiet 6.8-rc7 release. This week's seen a continued flow of fixes land, so we'll see what Linus decides on Sunday but in any event there are already a number of early 6.9 pull requests.
Steven Rostedt this week posted some interesting albeit experimental patches for the Linux kernel to support persistent traces that work across a reboot or crash.
Linus Torvalds just issued Linux 6.8-rc7 as we close in on the Linux 6.8 stable release in the next week or two.
The Linux 6.8 kernel continues coming together well and the v6.8-rc6 milestone is now available for testing. If all goes well Linux 6.8 will debut as stable in two weeks but with how things are currently pacing could end up being three weeks.
Sent in overnight was this week's batch of DRM "fixes" for Linux 6.8 that included some mostly minor fixes plus a few notable but small patches to Nouveau, the upstream open-source NVIDIA DRM/KMS kernel driver.
Matthew Wilcox with Oracle who previously worked on the Maple Tree data structure for the Linux kernel along with memory folios has now proposed "Rosebush" as a new hash table data structure for the Linux kernel.
The first "Power11" patches were queued today into the PowerPC's "next" Git branch ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.9 kernel cycle.
Posted on Sunday was the third iteration of the patches working toward the threaded/atomic non-blocking console "NBCON" support that is known to be one of the last blockers to sort out before the remainder of the Linux real-time "RT" patches can be upstreamed.
Linux 6.8-rc5 is out as the latest weekly test release of Linux 6.8 ahead of its stable debut in March.
In development the past several months has been patches to allow changing the compression algorithm used by the hibernation images of the Linux kernel while preserving the system memory contents. With using LZ4 yields faster system restore times from hibernation than the current de facto compression algorithm used of LZO. This work is now queued for introduction in Linux 6.9.
Adding to the list of features slated for the upcoming Linux 6.9 cycle is allowing RISC-V kernel builds to be compiled with Clang Link-Time Optimizations (LTO) enabled.
As more exciting than the Super Bowl (at least for some of us) is the new Linux 6.8-rc4 kernel available for testing.
While the Linux kernel has seen increased activity around dropping old/unused hardware drivers and other support, for old hardware that is still proven to be used on upstream Linux kernel releases does stick around and even will see the occasional fix... The latest example of that is a fix on the way for restoring Linux kernel support for the Transmeta Crusoe, the x86-compatible processor released back in 2000.
Linus Torvalds is up early today and already issued Linux 6.8-rc3 as the newest weekly release candidate of the forthcoming Linux 6.8 kernel.
One of the new features for Linux 6.8 that was merged late was enabling the -Wstringop-overflow compiler option to warn about possible buffer overflows in cases where the compiler can detect such possible overflows at compile-time. While it's nice in theory, issues on GCC has led Linus Torvalds to disabling this compiler option as of now Linux 6.8.
Posted at the start of 2022 was a set of 2.3k patches dubbed "fast kernel headers" to massively speed-up build times for compiling the kernel and to address dependency hell situations. While it was quick to iterate at first and some bits got upstreamed, it's been months since hearing anything new on the fast kernel headers topic. But today a new patch series was posted that's restarting the effort in working towards massively speeding up kernel build times.
Linus Torvalds just released Linux 6.8-rc2 as the newest weekly test release of this kernel set to debut as stable in March.
It's 2024 and sadly the real-time (RT) patches still have yet to be mainlined for the Linux kernel. At least though the out-of-tree patches continue to be quickly re-based and decrease in size over time... Out today is the Linux v6.8-rc1-rt1 patches for bringing the real-time support against the in-development Linux 6.8 kernel.
Over the weekend I shared some benchmarks showing some nice performance gains with Linux 6.7 over the 6.6 kernel when running on the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X HEDT processor within the new System76 Thelio. So now you may be wondering about the performance with the in-development Linux 6.8 kernel... Here are some early tests there.
A change merged today for the Linux 6.8 kernel intentionally following yesterday's Linux 6.8-rc1 is a move to enable the "-Wstringop-overflow" compiler option by default.
While Linux creator Linus Torvalds lost Internet and electricity amid winter storms last weekend and was without them for most of this week, he's still managed to deliver an on-time Linux 6.8-rc1 release following the two week merge window.
For those on a new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series system at least, the recently released Linux 6.7 stable kernel is looking mighty good at least for the Threadripper 7980X when testing on the newly-launched System76 Thelio Major.
Submitted and merged on Friday for the ongoing Linux 6.8 merge window were the LoongArch processor changes for this new kernel version. Most singificant for these Chinese processors is now supporting the Rust Linux kernel integration.
Last weekend the Linux 6.8 merge window paused due to Linus Torvalds losing Internet connectivity and electricity. It lasted for the better part of the week but then managed to get back to work and now thankfully has been back online albeit with intermittent electrical issues following a brutal winter storm.
Last week Linux creator Linus Torvalds spotted a bad performance regression with the early Linux 6.8 kernel state that was leading to his kernel build times doubling. Since then kernel developers were working on analyzing the issue and devising a fix. A few minutes ago the fix has worked its way into the mainline kernel.
Last weekend the Linux 6.8 merge window was thrown into a mess with Linus Torvalds losing Internet access and electricity during some significant winter storms battling the Portland, Oregon area. After nearly five days without being able to manage the Git merges for the Linux 6.8 merge window, a few minutes ago activity was restarted.
While the Linux v6.8 kernel merge window isn't even over yet and that kernel not debuting until March, a few days ago the first drm-misc-next pull request was submitted to DRM-Next to begin queuing the open-source graphics/display driver changes that will ultimately be targeting the Linux 6.9 kernel.
A Canonical engineer has been experimenting with implementing a Linux scheduler within the Rust programming language. His early results are interesting and hopeful around the potential of a Rust-based scheduler that works via sched_ext for implementing a scheduler using eBPF that can be loaded during run-time.
Waiting for pulling into the mainline kernel once Linus Torvalds is back online following Portland's winter storms is the sound subsystem updates for Linux 6.8, which include a lot of new sound hardware support.
Prior to Linus Torvalds' Internet and electricity being knocked out by a snow storm and thus impacting the Linux 6.8 merge window, his weekend was already in rough shape due to encountering a performance regression with new Linux 6.8 code that was causing his Linux kernel builds to be as twice as long as with previous kernels. An AMD Linux engineer was able to reproduce the regression and with upstream developers there is now a believed fix for this issue in the latest scheduler code.
All of the Input-Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU) subsystem updates were sent out this week for the in-development Linux 6.8 kernel.
Linus Torvalds just announced he's had to put the Linux 6.8 merge window on hold due to a brutal winter storm knocking the Pacific Northwest.
While the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display driver updates for Linux 6.8 excitingly include the new Intel "Xe" DRM and PowerVR Imagination drivers, AMD color management properties in experimental form, Raspberry Pi 5 graphics support, and more, Linus Torvalds isn't happy with some of the new Intel Xe driver code.
The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel display/graphics driver changes have been submitted for the Linux 6.8 kernel. As expected and to much excitement, the experimental new Xe kernel graphics driver is included for introduction in Linux 6.8 as well as the Imagination PowerVR driver for select Rogue GPUs. Plus there's new AMDGPU driver additions and other improvements with this pull, including the initial AMD color management code.
Linux 6.8 is continuing the work toward allowing the sysctl sentinel to be removed, the final empty element on sysctl arrays. This ongoing effort will in turn allow for saving an extra 64 bytes on each sysctl array and will enhance the build time size of the kernel.
It's not too often hearing Linus Torvalds himself raising the alarm bells over performance regressions of the Linux kernel, but that happened this evening with the ongoing Linux 6.8 merge window. Torvalds' AMD Ryzen Threadripper system suddenly was suffering from much longer build times at least as a result of new code for this kernel.
Linux 4.14 debuted at the end of 2017 with exciting features at the time like AMD Vega improvements, working on the since-failed Intel Cannonlake graphics, Zstd compression support, and more. The kernel has advanced a heck of a lot since then and Linux 6.7 recently debuted. It's now time that Linux 4.14 LTS has been declared end-of-life.
A six year old Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been reignited over the prospects of converting the Linux kernel to supporting modern C++ code.
Intel engineer and longtime Linux power management subsystem maintainer Rafael Wysocki on Monday sent out all the PM updates for the in-development Linux 6.8 kernel.
3491 Linux Kernel news articles published on Phoronix.