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
- [Meme] The Heart of Staff Rep
- Rowan heartily grateful
- Microsoft's Windows Falls to All-Time Low and Layoffs Reported by Managers in the Windows Division
- One manager probably broke an NDA or two when he spoke about it in social control media
-
- Gemini Links 18/04/2024: Google Layoffs Again, ByteDance Scandals Return
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/04/2024: Trying OpenBSD and War on Links Continues
- Links for the day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 17, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, April 17, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- North America, Home of Microsoft and of Windows, is Moving to GNU/Linux
- Can it top 5% by year's end?
- Management-Friendly Staff Representatives at the EPO Voted Out (or Simply Did Not Run Anymore)
- The good news is that they're no longer in a position of authority
- Microsofters in 'Linux Foundation' Clothing Continue to Shift Security Scrutiny to 'Linux'
- Pay closer attention to the latest Microsoft breach and security catastrophes
- Links 17/04/2024: Free-Market Policies Wane, China Marks Economic Recovery
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/04/2024: "Failure Is An Option", Profectus Alpha 0.5 From a Microsofter Trying to Dethrone Gemini
- Links for the day
- How does unpaid Debian work impact our families?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- When you give money to Debian, where does it go?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- How do teams work in Debian?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Joint Authors & Debian Family Legitimate Interests
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Bad faith: Debian logo and theme use authorized
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 17/04/2024: TikTok Killing Youth, More Layoff Rounds
- Links for the day
- Jack Wallen Has Been Assigned by ZDNet to Write Fake (Sponsored) 'Reviews'
- Wallen is selling out. Shilling for the corporations, not the community.
- Links 17/04/2024: SAP, Kwalee, and Take-Two Layoffs
- Links for the day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 16, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, April 16, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Inclusion of Dissent and Diversity of Views (Opinions, Interpretations, Scenarios)
- Stand for freedom of expression as much as you insist on software freedom
- Examining Code of Conduct violations
- Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship
- Ruben Schade's Story Shows the Toxicity of Social Control Media, Not GNU/Linux
- The issue here is Social Control Media [sic], which unlike the media rewards people for brigading otherwise OK or reasonable people
- Upgrading IRCd
- We use the latest Debian BTW
- The Free Software Community is Under Attack (Waged Mostly by Lawyers, Not Developers)
- Licensing and legalese may seem "boring" or "complicated" (depending on where one stands w.r.t. development), but it matters a great deal
- Jonathan Cohen, Charles Fussell & Debian embezzlement
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Grasping at Straws in IBM (Red Hat Layoff Rumours in 2024)
- researching rumours around Red Hat layoffs
- GNU/Linux Continues to Get More Prevalent Worldwide (Also on the Desktop)
- Desktops (or laptops) aren't everything, but...
- Who is a real Debian Developer?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 16/04/2024: Many More Layoffs, Broadcom/VMware Probed (Antitrust)
- Links for the day
- Links 16/04/2024: Second Sunday After Easter and "Re-inventing the Wheel"
- Links for the day
- Upcoming Themes and Articles in Techrights
- we expect to have already caught up with most of the administrivia and hopefully we'll be back to the prior pace some time later this week
- Links 16/04/2024: Levente "anthraxx" Polyák as Arch Linux 2024 Leader, openSUSE Leap Micro 6 Now Alpha, Facebook Blocking News
- Links for the day
- Where is the copyright notice and license for Debian GNU/Linux itself?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Halász Dávid & IBM Red Hat, OSCAL, Albania dating
- Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship
- Apology & Correction: Daniele Scasciafratte & Mozilla, OSCAL, Albania dating
- Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship
- Next Week Marks a Year Since Red Hat Mass Layoffs, Another Round Would be "Consistent With Other Layoffs at IBM."
- "From anon: Global D&I team has been cut in half."
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 15, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, April 15, 2024