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Linux Kernel 4.6 Officially Released (softpedia.com)

An anonymous coward writes: Just like clockwork, the Linux 4.6 kernel was officially released today. Details on the kernel changes for Linux 4.6 can be found via Phoronix and KernelNewbies.org. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 Maxwell support and Dell XPS 13 Skylake support are among the many hardware changes for 4.6. For Linux 4.7 there are already several new features to look forward to from new DRM display drivers to a new CPU scaling governor expected.
prisoninmate also writes: Linus Torvalds announced the final release of the anticipated Linux 4.6 kernel, which, after seven Release Candidate builds introduces features like "the OrangeFS distributed file system, support for the USB 3.1 SuperSpeed Plus (SSP) protocol, offering transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps, improvements to the reliability of the Out Of Memory task killer, as well as support for Intel Memory protection keys," [according to Softpedia].

"Moreover, Linux kernel 4.6 ships with Kernel Connection Multiplexor, a new component designed for accelerating application layer protocols, 802.1AE MAC-level encryption (MACsec) support, online inode checker for the OCFS2 file system, support for the BATMAN V protocol, and support for the pNFS SCSI layout."

22 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Run Away! by jandersen · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just like clockwork... ... introduces features like "the OrangeFS distributed file system, ...

    Just as I thought! I think we all has our suspicions, that Linux was an evil plot by the government, but here we see the proof: "Clockwork Orange"!!! Soon we will be forced to submit to the Ludovico Technique! Run for the hills.

  2. Re:I hope it is almost time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Since Office isn't a 3D real-time action multimedia adventure game, isn't it easy to use with WINE?

  3. Re:I hope it is almost time by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    is it finally time to give linux another chance?

    If MS released a linux version of office, I would switch to Linux as my main OS and just boot to windows when gaming.

    This is one of the reasons MS is not likely to release an Office for Linux. Office is MS' milk cow. Many users stick to windows just to ensure there won't be any compatibility issue.
    On Linux and Mac, Open/Libre office did an awesome job at fixing bugs and ergonomics the past couple of years. Plus, a growing number of administrations choose the open solution to save costs. Meaning, you'll have a growing number of people pushing to work with open/"standard" stuff (Complex Excel sheets are not compatible though). Google docs still stands way behind Libre/Open office.
    As for most games, unfortunately, windows is still the usable only platform (Steam on Linux has a few games).

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  4. Skylake P-states by cerberusss · · Score: 4, Informative

    One bit is very interesting to me:

    A significant redesign to CPUFreq and P-State for allowing the kernel's scheduler to better communicate changes to the CPU frequency scaling drivers

    Source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...

    It used to take some 30 ms for Intel CPUs to turbo-boost from a power-saving state (P-state). For CPUs in laptops, like the Core M series, this was noticeable when gaming. The latest-gen CPUs (Skylake) support very quick (1 ms) switching between P-states, and from what I gather, this kernel version now supports this. This means slight power savings and quick reaction from-and-to powersaving ("race to sleep").

    Apparently it's very hard to get this right, because from what I read, the Microsoft surface tablets had a lot of trouble in this area.

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    1. Re:Skylake P-states by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Everything I've read about the Surface Tablets issue hasn't been so much trying to get the CPU to change states, but rather some hardware interrupts preventing the CPU from getting to lower states in the first place. Drivers and buggy software consuming just enough CPU resources just enough of the time to prevent thermal throttling. That's a real PITA and in many cases reduces my battery life from 10 hours to 3 hours even when the device is asleep.

      Or is there some other thing you're talking about? If so can you link?

  5. Yes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Because allowing random userspace processes to mess with DMA capable hardware and PCI configuration space is a recipe for disaster.

  6. Re:Do these things need to be in the kernel? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

    A lot of hardware support is added in a new kernel. That's why sometimes, simply installing or upgrading to a new kernel gets rid of a number of problems, or improve performance. No wrong in this.

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  7. Re:OrangeFS distributed fs....uhh ok by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    OrangeFS is a fork/continuation of PVFS, a filesystem for high performance computing clusters. I understand it's rather popular in that world, as is Linux itself.

  8. Re:I hope it is almost time by dbIII · · Score: 2

    If MS released a linux version of office

    The older versions of MS Office from back when it had a usable interface work very well on linux via WINE and Libreoffice in many ways is better than MS Office. No Outlook? Outlook not so good. There are dozens of decent cross-platform email clients out there that do not lock you in to an obfiscated and slow email storage format.
    I don't even want to use MS Office on machines with MS Windows - I'd rather get things done quickly with a menu than click between panes of pretty pictures until I find the correct one.

  9. Ubuntu 16.04 by ebonum · · Score: 2

    When, if ever, will this kernel make it to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS? Ubuntu 16.04 LTS uses Linux kernel 4.4.

    1. Re:Ubuntu 16.04 by steamraven · · Score: 2

      Kernel Mainline. Use at your own risk.
      http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kern...

      I would bet this will end up in the proposed soon and land in the official repositories in a few weeks. The LTS usually get new kernels as they are released, but you have to select the appropriate LTS kernel meta-packages.

  10. Re:I hope it is almost time by Kjella · · Score: 3, Informative

    But theres an MS Office for the mac and always has been, and it works just fine. I'm not sure how that reconciles with your theory? Wouldnt the mac be the bigger threat to windows desktops, being that its a significantly larger portion of the desktop market?

    Office for Mac exists because of a deal/settlement between Microsoft and Apple, not because Microsoft wanted to. Nobody is in position to do the same for Linux. And Macs are a limited threat because you need Mac hardware and there's no centralized infrastructure like AD, they have a larger market share in that segment but got much less potential. If you could spin up corporate desktops with Linux/MS Office it'd start to threaten all their corporate efforts like Exchange, Sharepoint, Azure and so on. Sure, Microsoft will sell a home and student version but they know most people don't really need it at home, it's either so you can "graduate" to use MS Office at work or it's a home version because you already know how to use it from work.

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  11. Re:I hope it is almost time by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Informative

    I recently installed Mint with the intent to migrate over. For real this time. Funny enough, the problem was not games.

    Many recent games work in Linux. Well, at least Steam claims they do, and ... somehow, they do. Or might. I didn't get that far. The problem isn't so much games even. The problem already starts with hardware. Gaming hardware to be exact.

    Mint had a problem with my mouse. And of course its maker did not provide a driver for it. Neither do keyboard or flight sticks. There are even no dedicated drivers for the mainboard or the sound card. The "nouveau" open source nVidia drivers that Mint insists in using don't work and I had to use command line options to disable hardware acceleration 'til I could install nVidia's own drivers.

    That doesn't solve the other problems, though. Sound is a huge issue, and I'm not talking about having no 5.1 capability because, as I said before, no sound drivers. Two programs "competing" for using the sound card can well lead to one of them hogging it and not allowing anything else to use it. TeamSpeak, I'm looking at you there! Once there was even some sound related error that fubar'd xwindow badly enough that I had to kill and restart it. Which of course led to more problems where rebooting the system was actually the fastest option.

    While the sound at least works most of the time, I did not manage to get the mouse to work correctly, I had to plug in a different one. And yes, I have tried whatever some people suggested on various boards. Forget it. No chance. Clicks don't get registered, sometimes it seems that only clicks to the current foreground window do, or to make things completely insane the keyboard ceases to work for some reason. Due to the mouse, no kidding.

    Games are a completely unique matter anyway. Some work, more or less, some go apeshit when you try to adjust the resolution or they frizz out with some wonky sound errors. It seems that a lot of them go by "it compiles, ship it" when it comes to offering Linux support, like it's something that looks nice on the box but nobody will really ever use it so a token nod to it will do.

    So I'm back to Windows for my gaming needs, as much as I'd love to move away. The problem is, as far as I can tell now, not the games themselves. Ok, yes, some more love and testing would go a long way, but the problem Linux has today when it comes to gaming is hardware support. Manufacturers of gaming hardware don't give a shit about Linux. And OSS drivers, where existent at all in the first place, suck.

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  12. The Intel 1915 GPU Gen9 driver finally works! by ras · · Score: 4, Informative

    Please, for the love of $deity, lets this be true. We've been putting up with broken video on, well, just about every Intel GPU since they stated their driver update for Gen9 (Skylake). And that includes older hardware that used to work before this effort was started. I can understand the occasional glitch in a new kernel, but "doesn't boot into X, at all, ever" isn't just a glitch - and it's been going on for 5 kernels so far. Currently in 4.5 I can't reliably attach a second monitor.

    What amazes me is this isn't just Linux. The net was full of people complaining the video their brand new Windows laptop ranges from slow to utterly unusable. Naturally they said are going to get it fixed under warranty. Ha! It infests everything. The BIOS on my laptop can't initialise a second monitor either.

    It is getting better. 4.2 didn't boot for me. 4.5 works acceptably on one screen. The i915's bugzilla reports my current two monitor problem is fixed. Hell, maybe I'll be able switch on full GPU power saving in 4.7! But is it really this hard?

  13. Re:I hope it is almost time by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Informative

    PlayOnLinux has had an automated install wizard for MS-Office for many years now. Zero effort required.

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  14. Re:I hope it is almost time by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually - your entire description of wine is several years out of date. Wine today, especially when combined with PlayOnLinux runs just about everything I throw at it not only well - but better than windows does.

    I'm sure there are edge-case exceptions but they are extraordinarily rare these days. In fact, Wine is MORE compatible with pre-vista versions of windows than windows itself is (that is to say - there are more windows programs that run fully-supported under wine than there are older windows programs that work on newer versions of windows).

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    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  15. lol v4.6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Barely on version 4.6? He'll Microsoft was on version 2000 sixteen years ago!!! The lunix will never catch up at this pace.

  16. Re:OrangeFS distributed fs....uhh ok by gweihir · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Compile your own kernel, have only in there what you want. Be a luser (yes, this is the correct spelling) and have everything in there. As the kernel in in practice very modular, having this stuff as an option does not slow the rest down or cause problems. So far, this model has proven far superior to what MS does with their user-installed drivers.

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  17. 4.7?? by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Funny

    OSX is already up to version 10.11.5. These Linux people better start producing in order to catch up with the quality that is OSX and iTunes. They probably aren't even Agile. I'll mention it at the next stand up.

  18. Re:DRM display drivers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Something completely different: Direct Rendering Manager, not Digital Rights Management.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager

  19. Re:OrangeFS distributed fs....uhh ok by inode_buddha · · Score: 2

    Or, you could just do make localmodconfig; this only builds the modules you currently have loaded. You could make local yes config and simply do away with modules altogether, if you are sure that your HW setup isn't gonna change much. My experience is that most situations with USB are covered pretty well by the usb-storage modules and everything else can be builtin. Just to give more options to keep it lean-n-mean

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  20. Re:I hope it is almost time by F.Ultra · · Score: 2

    First of all Vulkan support in the drivers are in a very early stage so things might change, AND the benchmark that you posted where for AMD GPUs, the nVIDIA ones painted a completely different picture: https://www.phoronix.com/scan....