Linux Kernel News Archives


3,499 Linux Kernel open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

Linux Enabling Shadow Stack Support For x32
Linux Enabling Shadow Stack Support For x32

Back in Linux 6.6 the Shadow Stack support was finally merged as part of Intel's Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET). This years-in-the-making effort allows for better defending against ROP attacks for newer generations of Intel processors. For Linux 6.10, Shadow Stack support is being extended to x32.

26 March 2024 - x32 Shadow Stacks - 3 Comments
Rust Bindings Posted For KMS Drivers, VKMS Ported To Rust
Rust Bindings Posted For KMS Drivers, VKMS Ported To Rust

So far when it comes to Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) / Kernel Mode-Setting (KMS) display drivers for Linux, there are Rust efforts underway for the Apple Silicon kernel graphics driver with the Asahi Linux project as well as the new Nova effort for a modern open-source NVIDIA kernel driver from Red Hat. Also now out from Red Hat is posting the Rust bindings for KMS to review plus porting the existing Virtual KMS driver over to Rust as the "RVKMS" driver.

23 March 2024 - RVKMS - 29 Comments
Linux 6.9 Lowering The Overhead Of CR3 Writes
Linux 6.9 Lowering The Overhead Of CR3 Writes

The x86/entry pull request last week for the Linux 6.9 kernel contained just a single patch but it was a significant one at that in that it helps lower the overhead for CR3 writes and the benefits can be visible for workloads like Linux's perf functionality.

20 March 2024 - x86 Entry Change - 1 Comment
Linux 6.9 Cleans Up Printk Code While Preparing For Atomic Consoles
Linux 6.9 Cleans Up Printk Code While Preparing For Atomic Consoles

The Linux work around atomic consoles and threaded printing remains ongoing. This work is particularly interesting as it's the last major blocker before real-time "RT" kernel support can land. This work sadly isn't ready for the new Linux 6.9 cycle but at least some printk clean-ups are landing for issues discovered during the atomic consoles effort.

13 March 2024 - printk - 7 Comments
Linux 6.8 Is Very Exciting With Intel Xe Driver, Raspberry Pi 5 Graphics & New Hardware
Linux 6.8 Is Very Exciting With Intel Xe Driver, Raspberry Pi 5 Graphics & New Hardware

Linux 6.8 could debut as stable as soon as tomorrow if all goes well... Linus Torvalds last week was unsure whether an extra release candidate would be needed after the quiet 6.8-rc7 release. This week's seen a continued flow of fixes land, so we'll see what Linus decides on Sunday but in any event there are already a number of early 6.9 pull requests.

9 March 2024 - Linux 6.8 - 1 Comment
Third Version Of Linux Atomic Console Support Posted
Third Version Of Linux Atomic Console Support Posted

Posted on Sunday was the third iteration of the patches working toward the threaded/atomic non-blocking console "NBCON" support that is known to be one of the last blockers to sort out before the remainder of the Linux real-time "RT" patches can be upstreamed.

19 February 2024 - Needed For Linux Real-Time RT - 11 Comments
LZ4 Compression For Hibernation Images Queued For Linux 6.9: Faster Restore Times
LZ4 Compression For Hibernation Images Queued For Linux 6.9: Faster Restore Times

In development the past several months has been patches to allow changing the compression algorithm used by the hibernation images of the Linux kernel while preserving the system memory contents. With using LZ4 yields faster system restore times from hibernation than the current de facto compression algorithm used of LZO. This work is now queued for introduction in Linux 6.9.

13 February 2024 - LZ4 Compression - 21 Comments
Linux Patch Pending To Fix Support For The Transmeta Crusoe CPU
Linux Patch Pending To Fix Support For The Transmeta Crusoe CPU

While the Linux kernel has seen increased activity around dropping old/unused hardware drivers and other support, for old hardware that is still proven to be used on upstream Linux kernel releases does stick around and even will see the occasional fix... The latest example of that is a fix on the way for restoring Linux kernel support for the Transmeta Crusoe, the x86-compatible processor released back in 2000.

9 February 2024 - Transmeta Crusoe - 50 Comments
Torvalds Has It With "-Wstringop-overflow" On GCC Due To Kernel Breakage
Torvalds Has It With "-Wstringop-overflow" On GCC Due To Kernel Breakage

One of the new features for Linux 6.8 that was merged late was enabling the -Wstringop-overflow compiler option to warn about possible buffer overflows in cases where the compiler can detect such possible overflows at compile-time. While it's nice in theory, issues on GCC has led Linus Torvalds to disabling this compiler option as of now Linux 6.8.

2 February 2024 - Bad -Wstringop-overflow - 26 Comments
Fast Kernel Headers Work Restarted For Linux To Ultimately Speed Up Build Times
Fast Kernel Headers Work Restarted For Linux To Ultimately Speed Up Build Times

Posted at the start of 2022 was a set of 2.3k patches dubbed "fast kernel headers" to massively speed-up build times for compiling the kernel and to address dependency hell situations. While it was quick to iterate at first and some bits got upstreamed, it's been months since hearing anything new on the fast kernel headers topic. But today a new patch series was posted that's restarting the effort in working towards massively speeding up kernel build times.

31 January 2024 - Fast Kernel Headers - 56 Comments
Real-Time Patches Updated Against The Linux 6.8 Kernel
Real-Time Patches Updated Against The Linux 6.8 Kernel

It's 2024 and sadly the real-time (RT) patches still have yet to be mainlined for the Linux kernel. At least though the out-of-tree patches continue to be quickly re-based and decrease in size over time... Out today is the Linux v6.8-rc1-rt1 patches for bringing the real-time support against the in-development Linux 6.8 kernel.

23 January 2024 - v6.8-rc1-rt1 - 24 Comments
Linux 6.8 Running Well On The AMD Threadripper 7980X, Maintaining Gains Made With v6.7
Linux 6.8 Running Well On The AMD Threadripper 7980X, Maintaining Gains Made With v6.7

Over the weekend I shared some benchmarks showing some nice performance gains with Linux 6.7 over the 6.6 kernel when running on the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X HEDT processor within the new System76 Thelio. So now you may be wondering about the performance with the in-development Linux 6.8 kernel... Here are some early tests there.

23 January 2024 - Ryzen Threadripper 7980X - 1 Comment
LoongArch Lands Initial Rust Kernel Support For Linux 6.8
LoongArch Lands Initial Rust Kernel Support For Linux 6.8

Submitted and merged on Friday for the ongoing Linux 6.8 merge window were the LoongArch processor changes for this new kernel version. Most singificant for these Chinese processors is now supporting the Rust Linux kernel integration.

20 January 2024 - LoongArch + Rust In Linux 6.8 - 11 Comments
Linux 6.8-rc1 Should Release On Schedule Tomorrow
Linux 6.8-rc1 Should Release On Schedule Tomorrow

Last weekend the Linux 6.8 merge window paused due to Linus Torvalds losing Internet connectivity and electricity. It lasted for the better part of the week but then managed to get back to work and now thankfully has been back online albeit with intermittent electrical issues following a brutal winter storm.

20 January 2024 - Linux 6.8 - Add A Comment
Linux 6.8 Merges Fix For Recent Performance Regression Spotted By Linus Torvalds
Linux 6.8 Merges Fix For Recent Performance Regression Spotted By Linus Torvalds

Last week Linux creator Linus Torvalds spotted a bad performance regression with the early Linux 6.8 kernel state that was leading to his kernel build times doubling. Since then kernel developers were working on analyzing the issue and devising a fix. A few minutes ago the fix has worked its way into the mainline kernel.

18 January 2024 - Linux 6.8 Performance Fix - 12 Comments
Linus Torvalds Gets Back To Merging New Code For Linux 6.8
Linus Torvalds Gets Back To Merging New Code For Linux 6.8

Last weekend the Linux 6.8 merge window was thrown into a mess with Linus Torvalds losing Internet access and electricity during some significant winter storms battling the Portland, Oregon area. After nearly five days without being able to manage the Git merges for the Linux 6.8 merge window, a few minutes ago activity was restarted.

17 January 2024 - Linux 6.8 Resumes - 20 Comments
DRM Driver Changes Already Begin Queuing For Linux 6.9
DRM Driver Changes Already Begin Queuing For Linux 6.9

While the Linux v6.8 kernel merge window isn't even over yet and that kernel not debuting until March, a few days ago the first drm-misc-next pull request was submitted to DRM-Next to begin queuing the open-source graphics/display driver changes that will ultimately be targeting the Linux 6.9 kernel.

17 January 2024 - Linux 6.9 - 1 Comment
Rust-Written Linux Scheduler Showing Promising Results For Gaming Performance
Rust-Written Linux Scheduler Showing Promising Results For Gaming Performance

A Canonical engineer has been experimenting with implementing a Linux scheduler within the Rust programming language. His early results are interesting and hopeful around the potential of a Rust-based scheduler that works via sched_ext for implementing a scheduler using eBPF that can be loaded during run-time.

16 January 2024 - Rust Linux Scheduler - 80 Comments
A Fix For The Severe Linux Performance Regression Spotted By Torvalds
A Fix For The Severe Linux Performance Regression Spotted By Torvalds

Prior to Linus Torvalds' Internet and electricity being knocked out by a snow storm and thus impacting the Linux 6.8 merge window, his weekend was already in rough shape due to encountering a performance regression with new Linux 6.8 code that was causing his Linux kernel builds to be as twice as long as with previous kernels. An AMD Linux engineer was able to reproduce the regression and with upstream developers there is now a believed fix for this issue in the latest scheduler code.

14 January 2024 - Frequency Invariance Issue - 57 Comments

3499 Linux Kernel news articles published on Phoronix.