Arch Linux Is Now Officially Powered by Linux Kernel 4.7, Update Your Systems

Marius Nestor, writing for Softpedia: After a few weeks from its official release, it finally happened, Linux kernel 4.7 has just landed in the stable software repositories of the popular, lightweight and highly customizable Arch Linux operating system. Linux kernel 4.7 is the most stable and advanced kernel branch, and only a few GNU/Linux distributions have adopted since its launch on July 24, 2016. It's still marked as "mainline" not "stable" or "longterm" on the kernel.org website, which means that it didn't receive a maintenance update at the moment of writing this article. As for its new features, Linux kernel 4.7 comes with an updated AMDGPU graphics driver with support for AMD Radeon RX 480 GPUs, LoadPin, a brand new security module that ensures all modules loaded by the kernel originate from the same filesystem, and support for upgrading firmware using the EFI "Capsule" mechanism. Linux kernel 4.7 also marks the sync_file fencing mechanism used in the Android mobile operating system as stable and ready for production, implements support for generating virtual USB Device Controllers in USB/IP, supports parallel directory lookups, and introduces the "schedutil" frequency governor, which is faster and more accurate than the current ones.

Comments

I use Arch

[OrangeTide]

But I don't see the point of this being on /.

Re:I use Arch

[OrangeTide]

You need to use pacman to even install Arch, but it's mostly a cut&paste job from the wiki.

I guess maybe someone is still running off a USB drive and has nothing except a shell prompt?

Re:I use Arch

[OrangeTide]

Isn't Debian stable supposed to drag its heels?

Re:I use Arch

[geek]

But I don't see the point of this being on /.

There isn't one. Seriously, I can't recall the last kernel update that made me go "wow gotta have that"

Really isn't news worthy

Re:I use Arch

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know if somebody uses Arch Linux?

Don't worry, they'll tell you.

Re:I use Arch

[OrangeTide]

It felt more like a post about Arch than about the Linux kernel. I'm totally fine with news about Linux releases. But it seems very narrow to report on one package on one distro, when there are a huge variety of good distros out there.

lightweight?

[rubycodez]

oh that means it doesn't have systemd?

Re:lightweight?

[slack_justyb]

Yes it does have systemd and here's the person who made that call on Reddit saying why he made that call.

Also we have three out of six digits in common in our user IDs, that doesn't happen often for me and I have issues because that's the first thing I noticed about your comment. Cheers!

Re:lightweight?

[jbernardo]

Nope, in the first post on that reddit is only what he describes is what he feels were the shortcomings of Arch previous init system. The real reason for choosing systemd is below:

So why systemd over all those alternatives?

First, we don't know if the other systems were really alternatives (at least I don't know).

The answer is boring: Systemd solved many problems, it was there, it worked and we already used many of its tools in our initscripts at the time. There is no specific reason why we did not use $WHATEVER over systemd.

So, basically, they chose systemd just because they were using it. No evaluation of advantages/disadvantages, impact assessment, nothing.

Re:lightweight?

[erik.opnemer]

journalctl is slow on copy-on-write file systems, with Btrfs being the biggest offender

Don't format / as btrfs. You're welcome.

Re:lightweight?

[rubycodez]

my computer doesn't boot in slow motion because curl is on it though. systemd however...

Re:lightweight?

[rubycodez]

you miss the point with your stupidity, I can even use what's in busybox to read ascii file besides many, many other tools. you have no point.

systemd is unnecessarily complicated bloated garbage that even hinders troubleshooting

Very very happy about this

[Lisandro]

My main computer is an Intel Skylake laptop and 4.7 does seem to run much better on it than its predecessor. Wuv me some Arch.

Re:Very very happy about this

[iampiti]

What are you noticing? I'm curious as to why a kernel update could have such a noticeable impact on performance these days. I was under the impression that the kernel didn't change big parts these days. Maybe it's the frequence governor mentioned in the summary?

Re:Very very happy about this

[Lisandro]

No idea to be honest, but my desktop feels way more snappier than before, plus power usage has gone down - it runs cooler and the battery lasts longer.

Re: Arch Linux is legit, especially Blackarch

[Jack_the_Tripper]

I was thinking about having FBI for dinner tonight, think that might be the Subway $3 special today...or maybe it's BLT, mix those up a lot when my tinfoil hat is on too tight these days.

i think this is mostly related to arch

[orogorhotmail.com]

Why this makes the news? Short explanation because every poster before asked
Arch users fells the urge to speak about their distro, they re very vocal about it.

I ll be downvoted to hell. But yes, arch users think themselves superior like in "arch is the first distro to ..." , "arch power users..." , "popular, lightweight and highly customizable Arch Linux". Digging a bit more you ll realise
- It s mostly 1-2 years old linux users, amazed that they can use a command-line and paste wiki infos into it. Congratulating each others and globally pushing each other to use it.
- peoples will like to see their package management and how it handle stuff like downgrading, not upgrading too often, release cycle, review mechanism, security management, security patches for yesterday version, the famous AUR repository and it s security, the less bloated packages which are actually more bloated.

To be fair the distro also has some advantages but it s not the silver bullet its users like to tell

Re:i think this is mostly related to arch

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I think you're the first person I've found who agrees with me on that. Phrakture didn't (doesn't?) seem to do any active leadership. Arch wasn't perfect when Judd was around (didn't have package signing, DNSSEC, etc) but I recall being able to actually talk with him and discuss the finer points of distros as a concept and his motivation. Arch's older brother CRUX is another interesting system that has very obvious "Arch is totally like this" cues.

I used Arch for 5 years and switched to Gentoo, where I've been for almost 4 years now. There's bikeshed no matter which project you go to, but for me Gentoo provided all the choice and minimalization opportunities that I consider mandatory. Arch was great to learn more about Linux at first (since I came from Ubuntu and Debian prior), but with what I've learned with Gentoo, I feel like I could switch to LFS (or just run my own portage tree) if shit goes downhill and I'd be doing pretty good.

When you control the source, you control your computing. Thankfully the folks at Gentoo do a great job of maintaining as many system configurations as is reasonable. eudev keeps you clear from (most of) the retardation and OpenRC generally works without a hitch in my experience.

Re:arch linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo allows mixing keywords, so you can have a rock-solid stable system and selectively have the latest cgit or Pelican, for instance. Best of both!

Stuff that matters

[allo]

a linux distribution ships a new kernel release ...

Wayne?