Linux 3.12 Released, Linus Proposes Bug Fix-Only 4.0

An anonymous reader writes "Linus Torvalds announced the Linux 3.12 kernel release with a large number of improvements through many subsystems including new EXT4 file-system features, AMD Berlin APU support, a major CPUfreq governor improvement yielding impressive performance boosts for certain hardware/workloads, new drivers, and continued bug-fixing. Linus also took the opportunity to share possible plans for Linux 4.0. He's thinking of tagging Linux 4.0 following the Linux 3.19 release in about one year and is also considering the idea of Linux 4.0 being a release cycle with nothing but bug-fixes. Does Linux really need an entire two-month release cycle with nothing but bug-fixing? It's still to be decided by the kernel developers."

Comments

Compcache/ZRAM

[nctritech]

Linux has had compressed memory for quite some time, originally as Compcache and now as ZRAM. I have managed to use it on low-memory systems even today to get more work done faster. I'm not saying this to attack OS X, but rather to point out that equivalents already do exist. Also, I remember when a company (Quarterdeck?) offered a product for DOS/Windows called "RAM Doubler" that did the same kind of thing.

Re:There are quite a few things I'd like to see fi

[Microlith]

I once embarked on a quest to see what it took to discard the entire cryptographic subsystem. Long story short: good luck. I was surprised at how many different hashing and crypto algorithms were required to make use of common hardware and filesystems and network protocols. Are all of these interdependencies really necessary?

Rather than just asking if they are necessary, the better question to ask is what are they using the cryptographic subsystem for? For example, BTRFS does checksumming and offers compression. EXT4 uses CRC32 as well. And that use isn't arbitrary, they use it to protect data integrity and, in the case of BTRFS, maximize use of disk space. The TCP/IP stack offers encryption. These requirements aren't arbitrary, they pull it in to accomplish a specific goal and avoid duplicating code.

ARM is still a disaster.

And it will continue to be so long as every ARM device is its own unique thing. There might be forward progress with AArch64.

I have a Motorola Triumph I don't use anymore, but I wanted to build a custom system for. It uses a Snapdragon SoC and the only kernel I can use with it is a 2.6 series kernel from Motorola (or derivatives based on that code base) with lots of nasty deviations from the mainline kernel tree that will never make it into said mainline tree.

Probably lots of board specific details (the board support package) that have no relevance in the kernel. x86(-64) and other architectures have the advantage that once processor support is added, support for every motherboard that CPU gets plugged into is virtually guaranteed. x86 would have the same problem as ARM if not for the use of things like ACPI, PCI, and the various hardware reporting formats supplied by legacy bios/UEFI.

I have a WonderMedia WM8650-based netbook that originally came with an Android 2.3 port and I can't build anything but the WonderMedia GPL compliance kernel release if I want to use most of the hardware in the netbook, even though general WM8650 support exists in mainline.

You'll have to blame WonderMedia. Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc. all do the same thing: baseline GPL compliance release. Chip vendors will do the same thing, releasing only what is necessary and not bothering to integrate upstream. This is no small part of why vendors abandon Android devices so rapidly.

Something needs to change to make it easier for vendors to bring their drivers and SoC specifics to mainline so that ARM devices aren't permanently stuck with the kernel version that they originally shipped with.

Something does need to change, however that something is not in the kernel.

I also have a Fujitsu P2110 with a Transmeta TM5800 CPU that makes my VIA look like an i7. I also own Phenom II servers, AMD A8 laptops, MIPS routers, a Raspberry Pi, and many Android devices I've collected over the years. What I've seen is that the mad rush to develop for every new thing and every new idea results in old hardware being tossed by the wayside and ignored, especially when that hardware isn't based on an x86 processor.

And virtually all of that is still supported, with the ARM caveat noted above. Even the Transmeta CPU is still supported. What ends up happening is that the world moves on, and older hardware passes into history and receives less attention.

Mos