7 ms·

The 3.12 kernel is out

106 points by jeltz 13y ago

alayne 13y ago
Is there something significant in 3.12?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- plainOldText 13y ago
  It says right there in the post: * improvements to the dynamic tick code, * support infrastructure for DRM render nodes, * TSO sizing and the FQ scheduler in the network layer, * support for user namespaces in the XFS filesystem, * multithreaded RAID5 in the MD subsystem, * offline data deduplication in the Btrfs filesystem, and more.
  - m_ram 13y ago
    In case anyone else is curious, DRM in the kernel stands for Direct Rendering Manager [1]. It has nothing to do with the DRM that's usually discussed on HN. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager
    - RexRollman 13y ago
      Considering the negative connotations of DRM, I am surprised it isn't named something else.
      - cgh 13y ago
        The name Direct Rendering Manager has been around since the '90s, since the XFree86 days. So I'm pretty sure this abbreviation predates that of the "bad" DRM.
        RexRollman 13y ago
        Good to know. Thanks.
      - xradionut 13y ago
        All TLA are overloaded.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- jeltz 13y ago
  According to Phoronix benchmarks some workloads benefit greatly from the changes in CPU frequency scaling. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_312_performance http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_312...
- codex 13y ago
  Progress marches on, but as much as I enjoy some good kernel porn, only one in a thousand HN readers will be affected in any way at all.
- patrickmclaren 13y ago
  Significant for me, they reverted this bug - https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61781 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61781 Could not get a dbus connection following resume from suspend. Very annoying.
- thejosh 13y ago
  Macbook Air (2013) support works better in 3.12.
- hornetblack 13y ago
  Looks like it fixes a bug in eDP clamping that scrambles by screen.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
zabcik 13y ago
He better not miss out on 3.14.
- patrickmclaren 13y ago
  Pi wouldn't count on it.
  - cgh 13y ago
    But can we say that with any real precision?
    - icambron 13y ago
      Let's circle back to this.
      - wwarneck 13y ago
        These puns are starting to feel repetitive.
        adamnemecek 13y ago
        It's a real circlejerk.
        endgame 13y ago
        FOR PETE'S SAKE GUYS THIS ISN'T REDDIT!
        mhurron 13y ago
        and now the no humour brigade begins to circle the wagons.
hpaavola 13y ago
It's a good day for me and many others who are suffering from bug https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59841 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59841 , black screen after GRUB.
venomsnake 13y ago
3.12 allows for vga reset. So the unresponsive, bind/unbind passed trough video cards are a thing of the past. For the people that use it could be a big deal. (Tested on arch, 3.12-RC6, latest QEMU)
- stedaniels 13y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out! Good to know I won't need that work around in the future. I need to get back into this, got a couple of graphics cards lying dormant in a server just begging to be passed through to guests!
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    Check the later pages in that topic - there were few quirks if you use intel IDG, but I mostly managed to do it painless. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768
    - morsch 13y ago
      Wait, what? So VirtualBox can now get exclusive access to a graphics card for mostly painless 3d acceleration in VMs? That's pretty cool.
Mikeb85 13y ago
I hope they do a bug-fix only release. There's been an issue with Intel Wireless cards since 3.8. Had to downgrade to 3.7 to get consistent Wifi...
- yxhuvud 13y ago
  3.11 made a huge improvement for my wireless. Have you tried that?
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    Yes. It works well for a while, then randomly crashes.
    - edwintorok 13y ago
      Is it the iwl4965 driver? For me using 11n_disable=1 makes it work more reliably.
      - Mikeb85 13y ago
        iwl3945 actually. Trying your fix though, so far so good. On 3.11.6 right now...
        edwintorok 13y ago
        If you have an easy way to reproduce that could you report a bug about that upstream? The only way to reproduce it for me is when using a hotel WiFi, which gives a quite narrow window to report bugs/test patches.
- drill_sarge 13y ago
  There are >4000 known bugs in the kernel. They would be probably busy fixing just the significant ones until "4.0" when just doing bugfixing. The easiest thing to do is to report to the bugtracker of your distro and see.
BadassFractal 13y ago
Would definitely be very supportive of a bugfix release.
sz4kerto 13y ago
I am always suprised that people are not concerned about this: Linus @ https://lwn.net/Articles/572706/ https://lwn.net/Articles/572706/ "But the fact that I'm going to be (effectively) off-line next week means that I'm not opening the merge window for 3.13 yet - since I won't have the bandwidth to really do merges anyway. That doesn't mean that you can't send me pull request for the merge window early, of course - maintainers can always send their pull requests early rather than late, if they have everything lined up and ready. But if you have some feature that still wants polishing, you basically get a free week to do that. So the two-week merge window for 3.13 will start a week from now. You have an extra week. But that also means that I will be doubly disappointed in anybody who then leaves their merge request until the end of that two-week merge window." Linus is in absolute control of the kernel development -- this works quite well, but if he gets sick or whatever then how quickly and well will the community find a substitute?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- SEMW 13y ago
  There's a good discussion of 'what if Linus gets hit by a bus?' in the comments of http://lwn.net/Articles/393694/ http://lwn.net/Articles/393694/ [On the scalability of Linus].
  - pdw 13y ago
    Don't forget the segfault.org classic: "What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?" - An Empirical Study http://segfault.org/writing/segfault.org/Bus.html http://segfault.org/writing/segfault.org/Bus.html
- zimbatm 13y ago
  From what I saw and of the other core committers could take over his job. If Linus is not merging things, commits are probably just piling up on the repos of the respective subsystem responsible persons.
- qwerta 13y ago

106 points by jeltz 13y ago

alayne 13y ago

Is there something significant in 3.12?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
plainOldText 13y ago
It says right there in the post: * improvements to the dynamic tick code, * support infrastructure for DRM render nodes, * TSO sizing and the FQ scheduler in the network layer, * support for user namespaces in the XFS filesystem, * multithreaded RAID5 in the MD subsystem, * offline data deduplication in the Btrfs filesystem, and more.
- m_ram 13y ago
  In case anyone else is curious, DRM in the kernel stands for Direct Rendering Manager [1]. It has nothing to do with the DRM that's usually discussed on HN. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager
  - RexRollman 13y ago
    Considering the negative connotations of DRM, I am surprised it isn't named something else.
    - cgh 13y ago
      The name Direct Rendering Manager has been around since the '90s, since the XFree86 days. So I'm pretty sure this abbreviation predates that of the "bad" DRM.
      - RexRollman 13y ago
        Good to know. Thanks.
    - xradionut 13y ago
      All TLA are overloaded.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
jeltz 13y ago
According to Phoronix benchmarks some workloads benefit greatly from the changes in CPU frequency scaling. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_312_performance http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_312...
codex 13y ago
Progress marches on, but as much as I enjoy some good kernel porn, only one in a thousand HN readers will be affected in any way at all.
patrickmclaren 13y ago
Significant for me, they reverted this bug - https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61781 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61781 Could not get a dbus connection following resume from suspend. Very annoying.
thejosh 13y ago
Macbook Air (2013) support works better in 3.12.
hornetblack 13y ago
Looks like it fixes a bug in eDP clamping that scrambles by screen.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

zabcik 13y ago

He better not miss out on 3.14.

patrickmclaren 13y ago
Pi wouldn't count on it.
- cgh 13y ago
  But can we say that with any real precision?
  - icambron 13y ago
    Let's circle back to this.
    - wwarneck 13y ago
      These puns are starting to feel repetitive.
      - adamnemecek 13y ago
        It's a real circlejerk.
        endgame 13y ago
        FOR PETE'S SAKE GUYS THIS ISN'T REDDIT!
        mhurron 13y ago
        and now the no humour brigade begins to circle the wagons.

hpaavola 13y ago

It's a good day for me and many others who are suffering from bug https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59841 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59841 , black screen after GRUB.

venomsnake 13y ago

3.12 allows for vga reset. So the unresponsive, bind/unbind passed trough video cards are a thing of the past. For the people that use it could be a big deal. (Tested on arch, 3.12-RC6, latest QEMU)

stedaniels 13y ago
Thanks for pointing that out! Good to know I won't need that work around in the future. I need to get back into this, got a couple of graphics cards lying dormant in a server just begging to be passed through to guests!
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Check the later pages in that topic - there were few quirks if you use intel IDG, but I mostly managed to do it painless. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768
  - morsch 13y ago
    Wait, what? So VirtualBox can now get exclusive access to a graphics card for mostly painless 3d acceleration in VMs? That's pretty cool.

Mikeb85 13y ago

I hope they do a bug-fix only release. There's been an issue with Intel Wireless cards since 3.8. Had to downgrade to 3.7 to get consistent Wifi...

yxhuvud 13y ago
3.11 made a huge improvement for my wireless. Have you tried that?
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Yes. It works well for a while, then randomly crashes.
  - edwintorok 13y ago
    Is it the iwl4965 driver? For me using 11n_disable=1 makes it work more reliably.
    - Mikeb85 13y ago
      iwl3945 actually. Trying your fix though, so far so good. On 3.11.6 right now...
      - edwintorok 13y ago
        If you have an easy way to reproduce that could you report a bug about that upstream? The only way to reproduce it for me is when using a hotel WiFi, which gives a quite narrow window to report bugs/test patches.
drill_sarge 13y ago
There are >4000 known bugs in the kernel. They would be probably busy fixing just the significant ones until "4.0" when just doing bugfixing. The easiest thing to do is to report to the bugtracker of your distro and see.

BadassFractal 13y ago

Would definitely be very supportive of a bugfix release.

sz4kerto 13y ago

I am always suprised that people are not concerned about this: Linus @ https://lwn.net/Articles/572706/ https://lwn.net/Articles/572706/ "But the fact that I'm going to be (effectively) off-line next week means that I'm not opening the merge window for 3.13 yet - since I won't have the bandwidth to really do merges anyway. That doesn't mean that you can't send me pull request for the merge window early, of course - maintainers can always send their pull requests early rather than late, if they have everything lined up and ready. But if you have some feature that still wants polishing, you basically get a free week to do that. So the two-week merge window for 3.13 will start a week from now. You have an extra week. But that also means that I will be doubly disappointed in anybody who then leaves their merge request until the end of that two-week merge window." Linus is in absolute control of the kernel development -- this works quite well, but if he gets sick or whatever then how quickly and well will the community find a substitute?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
SEMW 13y ago
There's a good discussion of 'what if Linus gets hit by a bus?' in the comments of http://lwn.net/Articles/393694/ http://lwn.net/Articles/393694/ [On the scalability of Linus].
- pdw 13y ago
  Don't forget the segfault.org classic: "What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?" - An Empirical Study http://segfault.org/writing/segfault.org/Bus.html http://segfault.org/writing/segfault.org/Bus.html
zimbatm 13y ago
From what I saw and of the other core committers could take over his job. If Linus is not merging things, commits are probably just piling up on the repos of the respective subsystem responsible persons.
qwerta 13y ago