Linux News: Systemd, Linux 3.14 Release, Future Releases
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-03 11:38:39 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-03 11:38:39 UTC
Systemd
Systemd has been working on network support for this leading open-source init system. As part of this, systemd developers have now achieved support for obtaining a network connection in less than one millisecond... With that said, systemd developers are working towards having DHCP client and server capabilities built into the init system for having a super-fast booting OS and quicker network connections when resuming the system.
When systemd sees "debug" as part of the kernel command-line, it will spit out so much informaiton about the system that it fails to boot... The init system just collapses the system with too much information being sent to the dmesg when seeing the debug option as part of the kernel command-line parameter. Within the systemd bug report it was suggested for systemd not to look for a simple "debug" string to go into its debug mode but perhaps something like "systemd.debug" or other namespaced alternatives. The debug kernel command-line parameter has been used by upstream Linux kernel developers for many years. However, upstream systemd developers don't agree about changing their debug code detection. Kay Sievers of Red Hat wrote, "Generic terms are generic, not the first user owns them."
kGraft
SUSE has released kGraft to the public, the technology it developed to deliver live runtime patching of the Linux kernel.
Kgraft, which allows live patching of the Linux kernel without downtime, is available under the GPLv3 license
Future Releases
The highlights covered by Daniel for "neat" i915 DRM 3.15 changes include per-process address space support (currently limited to Ivy Bridge and Haswell but Bay Trail and Broadwell support is coming), fine-grained display power domain handling, runtime power management infrastructure work, support for inheriting the firmware frame-buffer as another step in Fastboot support, a lot of Broadwell patches, improved support for frame-buffer compression, 5.4GHz DIsplayPort support, generic DisplayPort aux helpers, and large cursor support to benefit HiDPI displays. For Intel's 4K display support, they now support 5.4GHz DisplayPort but they don't yet support multi-stream support (MST) as most 4K DisplayPort screens expose themselves as two displays to the driver.
There's many bug and performance fixes that landed while some corruption fixes and other patches will land later in the 3.15 merge window. The Btrfs code was also changed to avoid using its own async threads in favor of regular kernel work-queues, in hopes of using more generic code, but it might affect the file-system's performance.
Hopefully the Linux kernel LTO support will finish up in the Linux 3.15 kernel otherwise Linux 3.16 so we can move onward with some benchmarks of an LTO-optimized Linux kernel to see the performance wins at the cost of greater compile times and memory usage during the compilation process. It's worth noting that with the upcoming GCC 4.9 are also some significant link-time optimization enhancements.
With the Linux 3.14 kernel that was released over the night, Intel UMS support was deprecated. Intel hasn't maintained their user-space mode-setting support on Linux in about a half-decade with pushing everything these days through kernel-based mode-setting. The Radeon and Nouveau drivers have also become completely dependent upon kernel mode-setting too, with user-space mode-setting these days mostly being left to really old X.Org drivers without a DRM/KMS module. Modern Linux distributions are also beginning to drop support for these old GPUs.
Latest Release
After adding an extra release candidate to solidify the final result -- to the tune of a week's delay -- Linux creator Linus Torvalds on Sunday unleashed version 3.14 of the Linux kernel.
Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, formally released the Linux 3.14 kernel March 30. The new 3.14 Linux kernel follows the Linux 3.13 kernel that was released in January. Given that the new kernel carries the release number 3.14, which is a number that is also well-known as the mathematical Pi constant, there was early speculation that Torvalds might name the new kernel Pi. It's something that Torvalds shot down early on in the Linux 3.14 development process.
Latest Linux kernel has baked-in support for more cutting-edge ARM and MIPS processors, adds hardware support for Xen paravirtualuzation
While no official announcement has come down yet, the Linux 3.14 kernel will most likely be released in the hours ahead.
Kernel Level Misc.
Jovi Zhangwei, the lead KTAP developer, has posted the 28 patches implementing KTAP on the Linux kernel mailing list and is looking for code review in hopes it will be accepted into the mainline Linux kernel. KTAP is a script-based dynamic tracing tool that has a powerful scripting language, a register-based interpreter, is considered lightweight, and supports multiple architectures. The currently supported architectures for KTAP include x86/x86_64, ARM, PowerPC, and MIPS.
Linux kernel block maintainer, Btrfs lead developer and new Facebook employee Chris Mason revealed the news at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in Napa Valley on Thursday, Phoronix reported. Mason said that Facebook will trial Btrfs in its "web tier" servers, explaining that's the easiest tier to recover if necessary, though we imagine Facebook might ask the NSA for its backup copy in the event of disaster.
This small but important change would support a cgroup to swap to a particular file as setup by a new control file. This change is to allow the limiting of cgroups to a given swap file without being able to thrash the entire system's swap file. With this set of three patches, individual cgroups can be limited in their swap capacity.
Graphics Stack
While most of the open-source driver efforts around accelerating 2D with OpenGL are centered on GLAMOR, a set of patches were published today that provide performance improvements to the XA Gallium3D state tracker that also accelerate 2D using 3D driver code.
Benchmarks
Recent Techrights' Posts
- What Puts the Brakes on GNU/Linux Adoption on Laptops and Desktops is Monopoly Control (or Monoculture) Over the Distros
- Distros that adopt systemd are controlled by IBM and GAFAM
- Layoffs in Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft's LinkedIn
- There are silent layoffs at Microsoft this month
- We Don't Depend on Google and Don't Care for Google
- We have our own site search and we don't depend on Google to bring visits/visitors to us
- Facebook Layoffs Due to Enormous Debt, Nothing to Do With "Hey Hi" Slop
- The lies about "hey hi" in relation to layoffs will only contribute to further public resentment towards: 1) the media and 2) all the slop.
-
- Thrown Under the Microsoft Bus
- Microsoft wants disposable contractors
- Quitting IBM and "Rumors of an Upcoming RA [Mass Layoffs] in April 2026"
- Blue layoffs or "RAs" were confirmed upfront by the CFO
- GNU/Linux Distro Builders Barely Paid Enough to Pay Basic Bills, Chief of "Linux" Foundation (Not Even Using Linux!) Increases His Own Salary by Over 50% in 5 Years
- Salaries or compensation correlate with the ability to exploit people, not to create things
- The "Zero-Sum" Fallacy
- Fallacies like "zero-sum" - especially in the context of foreign affairs including war - are utterly ruinous
- A Happy Birthday to Richard Stallman
- Richard Stallman will turn 73
- Jürgen Habermas is Dead, But the Politicised, Inherently Corrupt, Corporatised Court for Patents That He Inspired Is Not
- In the news throughout the weekend
- Mountains of Abuses of Process by Brett Wilson LLP on Behalf of Americans and Sometimes at the Expense of British Taxpayers
- a virtual "limited liability"
- linuxteck.com FUD by LLM Slop, ubuntupit.com Passes the Slop Baton
- Unless they get back to doing long-form authentic articles, as opposed to slop, no good will come out of it
- Links 15/03/2026: New Shortages, Lynx Populations Depletion
- Links for the day
- Sruthi Chandran & Debian Diversity, Favoritism, Hidden Conflicts of Interest
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- software in the public domain
- Reprinted with permission from Alex Oliva
- Links 15/03/2026: Slop "Bubble Driving Interest in Chip Alternatives" and Wildlife Erosion Reported
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 14, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, March 14, 2026
- Change of Address at the Hired Guns, Address Removed
- Companies tend to alter their 'shell structure' in anticipation of major action
- The Good IBM Managers Have Flown Away, All That's Left is the Book-Cooking Loyalists
- IBM is just cheating the SEC and shareholders. This seems to be the only thing IBM's management is nowadays good at.
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 12 Out of 200: Months Ahead of Serial Strangler From Microsoft Who Helped Double the Lawsuits (Funded by Third Parties) as 'Revenge' for Exposing Crimes
- In 2024 I sat down and wrote about what had been done to me and to my wife
- Crime Comes in Many Forms
- apparently the SRA is OK with stranglers of women in America bullying the media in the UK
- commandlinux.com, linuxteck.com, linuxiac.com, and linuxsecurity.com are Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Domain Name
- once readers realise they read slop they immediately lose interest
- Links 14/03/2026: Adoption of Slop Has Killed BuzzFeed, Russia Sees "Economic Gain From Iran War"
- Links for the day
- Patriotism is Conditional, If It's Unconditional, Then It's Like a Cult
- My love for Software Freedom is only as strong as my love for Freedom of the Press
- Links 14/03/2026: Mass Layoffs at Facebook ('Meta') and Sweeping Layoffs at Twitter (xAI), Social Control Media and Slop Are Only Debt
- Links for the day
- Wrong Time, Wrong Place (Digg)
- Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian can relaunch Digg.com, but we doubt it'll work "this time for real!"
- Universities Became Bad Places for Work
- What happened to academia?
- Reporting New and Suppressed Information is What Journalism is All About
- In the domain of Free software, there are very few sites out there that offer exclusive coverage on community affairs and there are many gagging/censorship attempts
- The Limits of Speech and the Rationale of Limitations
- it seems to be part of an international trend
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 13, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, March 13, 2026
- Gemini Links 14/03/2026: Goodness, AD534 Multiplier Module, and Extroverts Online
- Links for the day
- Atlassian Corp: We're Doing Layoffs Because of "Hey Hi"; Wall Street: Atlassian Corp is Just a Failing Business
- Don't ask "the media"
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 11 Out of 200: Cannot Censor His Spouse, Accusations Are Repeated Today
- He already has a history of threatening to sue gay people in America; he cannot take criticism too well
- Price of Storage, Price of Energy... What Next?
- EPO workers are going on strike because their salaries don't keep up with price increases and tech companies without connections in "the channel" face long delays, low availability, and high prices (no "bulk" purchases), which further solidifies monopolies.
- Don't Forget Red Hat's RTO (Return-to-office) Layoffs
- How many people still remember that Red Hat did the same thing?
- Reminder: Microsoft silent Layoffs by RTO (Commute Time and Lack of Comfort/Work Satisfaction) Already in Effect This Year
- It's difficult to measure how many employees have already "left on their own" due to the RTO policy
- Founder of IBM Ventures Has Just Quit IBM
- Some people leave IBM and many people 'leave' IBM
- Signs of Impeding Mass Layoffs - Not Just Quiet Layoffs - at Microsoft
- Beneath the surface there are waves of layoffs and even entire teams are let go
- Career Science and Academia as Corporate Propaganda 'on Tap'
- article about surveillance
- Veteran GNU/Linux Journalist Jack Wallen Tries Geminispace and Likes It
- It'll turn 7 some time soon
- Scheduled Maintenance Tonight
- There will be similar work early next week
- "Alternative to Microsoft Office" Must Use Free/Open Standards/Formats for Real Sovereignty
- It would make sense for the EU to invest in its own workers and its own software projects, more so now that there are hostile countries both to the east and to the west
- IBM Has No Clue How to Integrate Companies Like Red Hat
- IBM is failing to respect this company's culture
- Fake Articles From Sites With "Linux" in Their Name/Domain Name
- we can at least hope that linuxteck.com made a decision to quit slop
- Links 13/03/2026: New US Weapons for Taiwan, Pakistan Air Strikes Hit Kabul
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/03/2026: Exhaustion and Smartphone Addiction
- Links for the day
- Friday the 13th & Debian Developers afraid to nominate in DPL elections
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 13/03/2026: Chatbot "Pentagon Contract" (Bailout) and Secret Service Ditches Slop Pusher
- Links for the day
- When Everybody Has a Right/Access to An Attorney/Lawyer (But Some Get Funding From Malicious American Corporations to Spend a Million Dollars on Many Lawyers and Several Barristers)
- And send about 75 KG of legal papers to the residence of the "opponent"
- European Qualifying Examination (EQE) Being Reduced to Pieces of Papers One Can Buy, Patent System Rapidly Losing Its Legitimacy
- Welcome to the "new Europe"
- Priorities in 2026
- 2026 is an interesting year
- Willis Towers Watson (WTW) Producing More Propaganda for EPO "Cocaine Communication Managers"
- The Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) has this new paper about Willis Towers Watson (WTW) and its annual EPO-sponsored propaganda, pretending all is well when things are clearly dire
- Head of Microsoft Office and Microsoft 360 is Leaving Microsoft Amid Problems and Mass Layoffs
- Microsoft is like a "legacy" company
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 12, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, March 12, 2026
- Gemini Links 13/03/2026: "Someone to Take Over Antenna" and Random Seed/RNG
- Links for the day