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
- IBM's "Next Step" Program
- Apparently close to 1,000 people being laid off by IBM wasn't worth reporting
- If GNU/Linux Rising is Just "Bots" (It's Not, Many Surveys Show the Same), Why Does Microsoft Rush to Lie About System Requirements of Vista 11?
- The real reason is, GNU/Linux is rising
-
- Improving the Static Site Generator (SSG), Fixing Bugs
- Next month the site's SSG turns 3
- Gemini Links 09/08/2026: Meatballs (1979), Gopher, RSS Experiment
- Links for the day
- 2026: The Year Richard Stallman Came Back to American Campuses
- There's more on the way
- XBox is Rotting Away, Technical Issues for Second Time in Two Weeks
- XBox is dying
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 08, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, August 08, 2026
- Red Hat is in Need of a 'Jolla', as an IBM-Controlled Red Hat is Becoming Like the Microsoft-Infiltrated Nokia
- Dying fast, partly by design
- Gemini Links 08/08/2026: Gigs, Poems, SREs, and Shared Passion
- Links for the day
- Kompromat Tactics in GNU and Linux
- Kompromat as a concept was covered here in the past in relation to Microsoft
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 143 Out of 200: After Nearly 10 Attempts to Settle With Us and Over a Million Pounds Spent on Lawyers and Barristers
- We are in no particular hurry
- 20 Years and 43 Years
- GNU/Linux is not just code, it's a philosophy, licence (copyleft), and community
- GNU/Linux Turns 43 Next Month, Many Distros Actively Maintained
- A lot of Debian-based distros are still actively maintained (we talk about this in IRC this evening), so the stability of the Debian Project is important
- Links 08/08/2026: GAFAM Colonialism "Paved Over Protected Wetlands", Slop Companies Hoard Software Patents as Debt Soars to Trillions
- Links for the day
- Links 08/08/2026: "Palantir Paid No Federal Income Tax" and "Who's Responsible for This Mess?"
- Links for the day
- Retained: The Time IBM's Red Hat Tried to Hijack or Take Offline Site of Critics, Failed on All Grounds (Meritless Action Intended to Harass Critics)
- Replicated from adrforum.com
- IBM's 'Final Solution': Censor Sites Not Controlled by IBM, Sites Where Dissent is Expressed
- IBM has no culture of free speech
- More Mass Layoffs Coming IBM's Way (Ones IBM Cannot Hide, Cannot Convince Enough People to Leave or Unjustifiably PIP Them When They Say No)
- The company that was like a "father of modern computing" is now stingy when it comes to travel. Not a good sign.
- What Will it Take for Mainstream Media to Report Silent or Secret Layoffs at IBM?
- "Silent" or "secret" sometimes because the media won't cover them
- Is the Future of IBM Red Hat Temporary Staff, Contractors?
- They want cheap, obedient lemmings
- Gemini Links 08/08/2026: Tribute to Lloyd Center, Radio Amateurism, Homeworlds
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 07, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, August 07, 2026
- Microsoft Uses Slop to Find Defects and Then Uses Slop to Replace Code, What Could Go Wrong?
- Botspam is the problem, it's not a constructive approach in any shape or form
- analytics.usa.gov: GNU/Linux Up Some More This Week
- Days ago it said 6.4%, now it's up to 6.8%
- RA-pocalypse: IBM Tells Workers "Taking a Hike" is Their "Next Step" ('Voluntary' Layoffs), Now It Prepares to Sack Lots of Contractors
- There definitely is something going on
- Legal Attacks on Techrights Have Made Techrights More Popular and More Widely Read
- The misogynists will have plenty of work to do this summer
- Kai Stephens (Barkley Walsh) & British Democrats in Clacton by-election hustings
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Daniel Pocock 'Punching' Nazis in the UK
- The so-called "cult" of so-called "Debianism" was left with nothing but massive legal bills
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 142 Out of 200: GemText is Not a Webpage, Gemini Protocol is Not the Web, and Capsules Are Not Websites
- our intention to appeal (escalate to the Court of Appeal)
- Microsoft: Our August 2026 Layoffs Are Not Layoffs Because... Reasons
- That's like IBM making "spin-offs", then pretending that no layoffs are happening
- Links 07/08/2026: UMG and Anthropic in Trouble Over Copyright Infringements Sold as "Training" (Slop)
- Links for the day
- Links 07/08/2026: "BMW Is Showing Commercials On Their Car's Dash Screens And They Want You To Think It's A Treat", Software Patents on Drones
- Links for the day
- What We Said About Red Hat's Fate Under IBM Turned Out to be Right on the Money (That IBM Lacks)
- There are no layoffs at IBM
- IRC Networks Show No Signs of Going Away, IRC Enters Its 39th Year
- That IRC daemons are still actively developed and patched in summer of 2026 (over 38 years after IRC was born) says a lot about IRC's importance
- Social [Control] Media Needs to Die
- I am a bit shocked to recall that I wasted a lot of time on it
- Some Malware is Legal Because It's Made and Distributed by Politically-Connected GAFAM
- In reality, the security non-experts 'championed' (and salaried) by GAFAM are anti-security people who advocate back doors
- The GNU/Linux Anniversary is Next Month, Not This Month
- It'll turn 43
- At Clacton by-election Hustings Event Daniel Pocock Says "Social [Control] Media Has Contributed to Some of the Anti Social Behaviour."
- No doubt many problems in society are caused or at least amplified/accentuated by this horrible phenomenon
- IBM Insiders Explain Why IBM is in Very Serious Trouble
- Will IBM last long enough for any "quantum" deliverables to become a reality?
- The Register MS Took Money From Broadcom to Publish Fake 'News' With "AI" Mentioned 35 Times
- not legitimate or authentic journalism.
- GNU/Linux Approaching 20% in Georgia (the Country)
- Usage of GNU/Linux was near 0%, as measured by statCounter, several years ago
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 06, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, August 06, 2026
- Gemini Links 07/08/2026: Radio Amateurism, Summer Updates, and Programming "Taste"
- Links for the day