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
- Daniel Pocock in The Guardian This Morning
- There is an opportunity here to spread a message, even if Pocock won't win a seat
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- We Need Less Gadgets, More Humanity
- If people are being honest with themselves, many of the gadgets they claim they "cannot live without" are just excesses and distractions they could definitely leave behind
- Technology and Gadgets Got Obese, Just Like Their Users
- They now sell us so-called 'phones' for slop
- "Samsung Recently Projected a 19-fold Surge in Second-Quarter Operating Profit", Now There Are Mass Layoffs
- In a 9-month period Samsung's debt rose by about 80%
- Gemini Links 20/07/2026: Dungeon Meshi/Undertale Crossover, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Dark Web and Beyond"
- Links for the day
- IBM's Control of the Media "Just Showed What Taking Accountability Does Not Look Like"
- It is no secret that IBM pays the media
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- The collapse of studios continues
- GNU/Linux Approaching International Average in Djibouti
- One can envisage further gains for GNU/Linux, seeing Microsoft is in such a bad shape
- Daniel Pocock "[t]he Australian Taking on Nigel Farage — from Down Under"
- This can help raise awareness of some issues
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 19, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, July 19, 2026
- Misleading Coverage in Slashdot Promotes and Openwashes Slop
- Piggybacking RMS for the headline seems like a PR stunt of sorts
- As Envisioned, a Rebellion and Many Whistleblowers at Microsoft
- Whistleblowers ensure Microsoft has totally lost control of the "narrative" (face-saving PR)
- Microsoft is a Right-Wing Company
- Just remember that when people call Microsoft "woke"
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- Can anyone explain to us why?
- Gemini Links 19/07/2026: Visiting Ethiopia, Two Dreams, and Price of Skinnerboxes
- Links for the day
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- Wall Street is a naked emperor
- Telling Our Story
- In the coming years we'll have some high-impact stories to share and generally tell without fear of reprisal
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- From what we can gather, in 2024 XBox was already entering what's known as a "death spiral". Now it's literally moving down the drain/pipe.
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- History is like that
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- Taking note of estimated GNU/Linux share in that country, we see it hovering around the international median/average this month
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- Links for the day
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- At the moment we have six series running in parallel; two of them concern the EPO
- 'Journalists' Who Help IBM Cover Up Fraud
- Journalistic malpractice
- The "Modern Linux" Song
- Join us now, make the kernel
- XBox Layoffs Vastly Bigger Than Microsoft Told the Press, Microsoft Keeps Trying to Change the Subject
- Many so-called "XBox fans" are no more
- Microsoft Lost 1,200 Billion Dollars in "Market Value", Take a Look at What Happened to Windows
- while Windows continues to fall unstoppably GNU/Linux is surging
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- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
- The State of Slopfarms
- Slopfarms or LLM slopfarms are a menace and a problem on the Web
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- seventh in the world for GDP (PPP) per capita
- Free Software is Like an 'Activist Movement'
- People who argue strongly in favour of something (even very good things) will attract the wrath of those whom they oppose
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 18, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, July 18, 2026
- UKIP TV (GBNoise) Covers Challengers to UKIP Nigel, Daniel Pocock Mentioned
- Way to get noticed
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- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/07/2026: "Business Idiots Everywhere", "The Siren Song of DePIN", and Entering Geminispace
- Links for the day
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- For its own national security it would be wise to abandon Windows
- This Bubble is Bursting, Piecewise
- It's nice to see Wall Street getting some reality checks
- It's Not About XBox, Microsoft is Already Firing Hundreds of People Who Do "Security [sic] Engineering" [sic]
- The official reason/excuse/lie told is something about slop, but no sane person would buy it (not even insiders who are impacted)
- Can We Finally All Agree That UEFI 'Secure Boot' is a Sham That Harms Security and Gives Microsoft Remote Control Over All PCs and Servers (Even Those That Don't Run Any Microsoft Software)?
- Cui bono?
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- Notice Windows falling to an all-time low
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- Almost none of them work in the media, which seems to favour parrots, slop, or parrots that use slop
- "But Stallman is Scaring Away Women..."
- Such dishonest projections (projection tactics) needs to be called out and refuted
- First Female Debian Project Leader (DPL) Affirms Low Profile and Inferior Status of Women in GAFAM
- 3 months ago Sruthi Chandran was elected as Debian Project Leader (DPL) for a period of 12 months
- After 5 Years Vista 11 Still Adopted Less Than Its Predecessor (Orphaned, End of Life Since Last Year)
- Notice Windows going down to 40%
- We Don't Depend on Google (or Search Engines in General)
- there's a lesson here and it extends beyond sites
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- "Linus Torvalds tells AI haters to fork off"
- Explaining the Culture of Bulletin Board-Style Chat
- Only desperate detractors would try to present something (cherry-picked) from IRC as some sort of official statement for Techrights
- Independent, But Not Fringe
- "Daniel Pocock is an Independent Candidate."
- In Free Software, Nobody Gets Fired
- Way to own one's code and project
- PIP-Styled Mass Layoffs Allegedly Coming to Microsoft by 12 August 2026
- Microsoft has been doing "silent layoffs" (PIPs and more) for quite some time
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- Funnily enough, albeit not surprisingly, the same people who attack Pocock also attack us
- Links 18/07/2026: Spotify Uses Slop Song Descriptions, "San Francisco Demands Removal of Nudify Apps"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
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- IRC logs for Friday, July 17, 2026
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- Links for the day