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Linux 5.8-rc1
- xenonite 6y agoCould the lockdowns and the extra time at home be partly responsible for this achievement?
- stolen_biscuit 6y agoI wouldn't discount it, but I think many software devs continued working from home instead of getting laid off. maybe all those kernel contributors found themselves with an extra 2/3 hours in the day without the daily commute? Not to mention not being able to carry out daily social lives + leisure activities
- laumars 6y agoThere are a lot of us developers out there who have had less free time during the lockdown. Whether it’s because of having young kids or doing charitable work in the local community for those less fortunate.
- reaperducer 6y agoOr you're a dev working in healthcare.
- sushshshsh 6y agoHAH wow this hit way too hard. I don't have a shred of free time. I should be working on the backlog right now as I post.
- gizmo686 6y agoHow much of Linux development is actually volunteer work? I assumed the bulk of the work was done by professionals whose employers were paying them to work on the kernel. In that case, I could see a non-trivial number of those developers being in a situation that their other work commitments were slowed down, so kernel development got a bigger chunk of their time.
- esgwpl 6y agoNot a lot, you can see it on the development statistics that LWN releases for every major kernel releases, for 5.7, it's only about 13-14%, so most people working on the kernel do indeed get paid for it. https://lwn.net/Articles/821813/ https://lwn.net/Articles/821813/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- elitistphoenix 6y agoSubject: Linux 5.8-rc1 Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2020
- sambeau 6y agowe have modified about 20% of all the files in the kernel source repository also despite not really having any single thing that stands out So, is this a ton of bugfixes? A "Snow Linux" as-it-were? If so that will be awesome.
- kelnos 6y agoI really like that no single thing stands out. It shows that a lot of people were working on a lot of different things, which is a sign of a healthy project... not that I would otherwise think of Linux as an unhealthy project.
- spanhandler 6y agoAndrew Morton (7): updates more updates yet more updates still more updates even more updates some more updates updates Real illuminating merge log there bud :-)
- wmichelin 6y agoI'm surprised this is allowed in the linux kernel. I am not familiar, but assuming these are commit messages, that's pretty damn pathetic.
- stefan_ 6y agoThese are only merges - they don't matter. The actual functional commits are excellent beyond anything you would ever find in your company VCS.
- tester756 6y ago>you would ever find in your company VCS. But why so offensively? He raised good concerns
- saagarjha 6y agoBecause they are good commits.
- markdown 6y ago> pathetic
- mrspeaker 6y agoHe didn't raise good concerns, he got outraged after reading a HN comment and labeled "pathetic" something he knows nothing about, has no context in, and didn't even spend 5 minutes researching.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
- filereaper 6y agoI've lost track of linux versioning, but do folks here know how the next LTS kernel line is determined? Looking at kernel.org, the last LTS was the 5.4.z series, so I'm curious when the next LTS branch will be cut to use these features in most distros.
- raziel2p 6y agoI don't think they have a rigid system, but this post indicates that they try to make it the last release of the year: https://people.kernel.org/gregkh/next-long-term-supported-kernel-release https://people.kernel.org/gregkh/next-long-term-supported-ke...
- kemotep 6y agoLooking at past releases[0] it appears every 5th release so since 5.4 was the last stable release, the next release at 5.9 should be LTS. [0](https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html)
- freedomben 6y agoAlso worth noting for people that use distribution kernels, a distributions LTS kernel may or may not match the official one. Just something to be aware of.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sixothree 6y ago800,000 new lines of code. No matter how you count them that’s a lot of typing. My main project has 95 libraries and is nowhere near that massive.
- randyrand 6y agoThat’s a lot of new surface area for attacks. A lot of new code quickly worries me.
- tedk-42 6y agoWhat if it's 790000 lines of new/updated tests and 10000 of new functionality?
- ajdlinux 6y agoThe day a ratio anywhere close to that happens in the Linux kernel, be alert for all the flying pigs outside.
- tedk-42 6y agoHahaah TIL - Not a contributor, nor do i have the C skills to know what's going on in the code base to understand it
- dotancohen 6y agoI've actually got Pink Floyd on right now, so it's not that far fetched.
- ac29 6y agoA lot of that is driver code, since so many devices are supported by mainstream. The typical user wont see anywhere near 800k new lines of code running on their systems when upgrading.
- mehrdadn 6y agoIf you're interested in async I/O, keep an eye on the io_uring changes.
- jeffbee 6y agoEasily 5-10 years before most of us can expect to use that in a work context.
- mehrdadn 6y agoI assume you mean because of the time it'll take to trickle down to production kernels? Does that take 5-10 years?
- jeffbee 6y agoWell, when I quit the place we both worked, the production kernel was 3 years behind and rolling forward at .5 years/year, so that implies 6 years to get current. The next company I joined is using RHEL's 2.6.32 in production, more than 10 years after its release.
- geofft 6y agoHave you asked whether you're able to use newer kernels, at least on your subset of hosts? I've been having pretty good luck at work just asking for kernel updates - though it helps that I'm willing to stare at oopses and kcore dumps and userspace regressions (they happen!) on the canary machines.
- jariel 6y agoI'm a little wary of the types of metrics: LOC, updates, file changes, merges. Those are tertiary issues at most. Features, quality, issues resolved etc.. is mostly what matters.
- anonymousiam 6y agoI am wondering if kernel developers had more time to spend on the project because of all the recent virus lock-downs. That could account for the higher-than-usual number of files changed, and overall bulk.
- S_A_P 6y agoAs someone who has nowhere in the vicinity of 1% of the responsibility to insuring that a code base is clean and performs its intended function- who is reviewing all these pull requests? It cant be Linus, right? How are the folks with PR privileges vetted? Fully admitting to ignorance here, but to me it seems that this problem is way to big to prevent bad actors from participating. I would love to hear thoughts to the contrary.
- secondcoming 6y agoCheck out lkml.org It's done by email
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoThat doesn't really answer the question. How do we know all of the reviewers are uncompromised?
- unixhero 6y agoThey have caught naughty pull requests before. I guess it's a multiple eyes thing. Certainly better than closed source Windows 10 and OSX.
- marmshallow 6y agoSeems this is biggest in terms of # commits / lines of code / etc. But does anyone have opinions on what the most “impactful” linux releases ever was?
- ra 6y ago5.8-rc1 was 2 months ago; 5.8 went through rc7 and was released as final last week.
- archseer 6y agoThis is about 1-2 months old (dated Jun 14th)? 5.8 is out already. https://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges https://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges
- ksec 6y agoI am looking at the changelog, even if we ignore drivers being used not in Server Environment, and improvement from Security, Networking, I am wondering how are BSDs going to compete?
- jabl 6y agoIncreasingly, they don't. I don't think a Linux monoculture is good, but from the perspective of an individual or organisation choosing which OS to use, there's less and less reason to choose a BSD.
- mnd999 6y agoYeah, completely. Competition and alternative approaches are what pushes us forward. The fanboi culture of “*BSD is dying”, “use Chrome” etc. which tech communities seem to encourage makes it worse. Keep doing it the hard way, trying something different and running your code on a different browser and OS. In the long run, Windows and the BSDs have done a lot to make Linux good, in the same way that Android and iOS push each other forward. I’m just hoping folks keep adopting Firefox.
- benibela 6y agoAnd the surrounding tooling Git and C I am using Mercurial and Pascal. But they seem to be dying :(
- anilakar 6y agoThe number of lines in the amdgpu driver sadly does not mean that it would be usable in any way. The amount of red in dmesg is just sad when you're stuck with USB-C DisplayPort graphics.
- EmilStenstrom 6y agoNotably missing: “I want to thank everyone involved for all the work they put into Linux, this is really a community driven project.”
- IntelMiner 6y agoExcept Linux by and large is written by paid programmers
- megous 6y agoA lot of thanks giving is done at the lower level.
- bjoli 6y agoI remember reading that he got a new threadripper-based workstation. It seems like he is putting it to good use.