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Linux Kernel 4.9 Officially Released (kernel.org)

"As expected, today, December 11, 2016, Linus Torvalds unleashed the final release of the highly anticipated Linux 4.9 kernel," reports Softpedia. prisoninmate shares their article: Linux kernel 4.9 entered development in mid-October, on the 15th, when Linus Torvalds decided to cut the merge window short by a day just to keep people on their toes, but also to prevent them from sending last-minute pull requests that might cause issues like it happened with the release of Linux kernel 4.8, which landed just two weeks before first RC of Linux 4.9 hit the streets... There are many great new features implemented in Linux kernel 4.9, but by far the most exciting one is the experimental support for older AMD Radeon graphics cards from the Southern Islands/GCN 1.0 family, which was injected to the open-source AMDGPU graphics driver...

There are also various interesting improvements for modern AMD Radeon GPUs, such as virtual display support and better reset support, both of which are implemented in the AMDGPU driver. For Intel GPU users, there's DMA-BUF implicit fencing, and some Intel Atom processors got a P-State performance boost. Intel Skylake improvements are also present in Linux kernel 4.9.

There's also dynamic thread-tracing, according to Linux Today. (And hopefully they fixed the "buggy crap" that made it into Linux 4.8.) LWN.net calls this "by far the busiest cycle in the history of the kernel project."

22 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Is systemd still being used? by Fwipp · · Score: 3, Informative

    You don't know what a kernel is, do you?

  2. Re: Is systemd still being used? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The kernel is pretty damn useless if the userland is inaccessible because the init system broke unexpectedly and the system didn't boot properly.

    An OS needs a robust kernel, a robust init system and a robust userland. If even just one of those isn't working right, the entire OS is useless.

  3. Re: Is systemd still being used? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Funny

    You don't know what a kernel is, do you?

    The kernel is only a very small part of systemd at this point. Nothing to get too worked up about now. Wait until kerneld and kernelctl get to version 1.0 ...

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    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  4. Re: Is systemd still being used? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    You don't know what a kernel is, do you?

    Sure, it's that bit of code consisting mostly of device drivers that's awaiting to be assimilated by the systemd.

  5. Re: Is systemd still being used? by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think someone needs to "make the init system great, again"

    (sorry, lol)

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    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  6. Re: Is systemd still being used? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or just go back to sysvinit. It worked perfectly fine for a long time, and there was no good reason to switch to systemd.

  7. Re:Windows 10 ahead by ckatko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hahahahahahah. Try opening a terminal. Now try opening a tab within the terminal.

    Hahhahahahha.

  8. Re: Is systemd still being used? by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The kernel is pretty damn useless if the userland is inaccessible because the init system broke unexpectedly and the system didn't boot properly.

    Duh, "apt purge systemd" and you can enjoy a reliable init. Just like the solution for most sound problems is "apt purge pulseaudio". Or, closing a link-local security hole by "apt purge avahi-daemon". I think you get the pattern.

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    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  9. Re:Windows 10 ahead by NotInHere · · Score: 2

    Or try opening the file explorer and then try opening a tab inside it.

  10. Re:Interesting, but does it RUN LINUX? by Mal-2 · · Score: 2

    I'm still on 2.2. Did they skip 3 altogether?

    From the link in TFS:
    longterm: 3.18.45 2016-11-30
    longterm: 3.16.39 2016-11-20
    longterm: 3.12.68 2016-11-29
    longterm: 3.10.104 2016-10-21
    longterm: 3.4.113 2016-10-26
    longterm: 3.2.84 2016-11-20

    Seriously, should I have used lmgtfy?

    --
    How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
  11. Re:Windows 10 ahead by ckatko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, you use command prompt / terminal for tons of things in Windows. I support Windows systems professionally.

    Powershell's OOP scripting language is pretty neat, at least on the surface. But it basically breaks down any time you want to do something complex, while bash/sed/awk/piping holds up strong in Linux.

  12. Re: Is systemd still being used? by Kjella · · Score: 2

    I think someone needs to "make the init system great, again"

    More like KISS, basically if all you want is boot -> run -> shutdown in an easy to understand sequence then SysVinit is fine. If you're lucky suspend/resume works too, if you don't get fancy and change attached devices. Simple init.d scripts to start and stop without dependency management. For the people that don't need any more than that everything else will be a massive overcomplification. For those who want a full system resource and container/service management solution it'll never be enough. But I'd say the latter won when Debian switched to systemd, now it's only a matter of time.

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  13. Re: Is systemd still being used? by mykepredko · · Score: 3, Funny

    Following the patter, it seems like "apt purge anonymous coward" doesn't seem functional yet.

  14. Re: Landed? by Type44Q · · Score: 2

    Since landing is the opposite of launching

    Could it be that these two concepts not only aren't mutually exclusive... but that they might even be interrelated??

  15. Re:Windows 10 ahead by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 2

    Powershell's OOP scripting language is pretty neat, at least on the surface. But it basically breaks down any time you want to do something complex, while bash/sed/awk/piping holds up strong in Linux.

    In what way does it break down? I'm weaning myself off Microsoft products, but PowerShell is a hard habit to kick because it works so well and is made with a different mindset from the everything-is-text approach of virtually all other solutions. Once you get used to everything being an object, it feels so archaic to go back to the old ways.

    I would say that bash/sed/awk would be better for text processing (since it has to really). I still occasionally use awk for that sort of thing, but mostly that's because I know it so well that I haven't felt the need to explore PowerShell's text processing beyond the basic Select-String (sls) and the standard where, sort, etc.

  16. For those who missed the point of the above by dbIII · · Score: 2

    Avahi was developed by Lennart Poettering
    Pulseaudio was developed by Lennart Poettering (but has improved massively since).
    SystemD is still being developed by Lennart Poettering.

    Maybe it's best to wait until he finds a new toy and someone who is keen on incremental improvement instead of rapid bug filled expansion is maintaining systemD.

    1. Re:For those who missed the point of the above by somenickname · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The damage is already done. The paradigm has already shifted from, "I'm a Unix guy so I understand what the machine is doing" to, "Nobody understands what the machine is doing". Any time you can take Poettering software out of the loop, your system becomes a lot more sane and understandable. But, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to do that and, with the deep pockets of RedHat, they will eventually own the new dystopian Linux userspace. RedHat does a lot of good in the Linux world but, the badness they have unleashed is almost unforgivable.

    2. Re:For those who missed the point of the above by dbIII · · Score: 2

      I agree very strongly especially after many instances of just giving up without having a clue what the audio problem actually is (despite hours of reading logs and docs) and uninstalling pulseaudio from a workstation. In every single case it has taken less than a minute after that to get audio working via ALSA.
      In Lennert's blog he says a lot about redoing everything in his image instead of it being a *nix system - it's deliberate. That's fine IMHO if you are doing something new, but when building on the work of others it's extremely antisocial.

    3. Re:For those who missed the point of the above by somenickname · · Score: 3, Interesting

      He should have been shunned from the Linux ecosystem after PulseAudio. It's better than it was 8 years ago but, it's still unreliable garbage that sometimes flakes out while trying to solve a problem that no one actually has. For the vast majority of users, life was much better when bits were directly blasted to ALSA. I'd much rather deal with the limitations of ALSA than the unpredictability of PulseAudio.

  17. Systemd is like Trump by Shane_Optima · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Or just go back to sysvinit. It worked perfectly fine for a long time, and there was no good reason to switch to systemd.

    I don't have much firsthand knowledge here but I suspect this is why systemd has seen such widespread adoption despite its warts. If you don't care about dependency management via declarative syntax that's fine, but distro builders probably appreciate it. If you view its ability to babysit processes as un-UNIXy and a slippery slope leading towards a more Windows-like state of affairs, heck I'd largely agree with you there... but once again, this is something distro builders and many other developers are going to quickly become addicted to. If you think virtualization/containerization features are useless, you're living in the stone age.

    You greybeards could have halted this thing in its tracks early on by throwing your weight behind an alternative like OpenRC, but instead the majority appeared to adopt this "there is absolutely no reason to care about any systemd feature whatsoever" attitude... so now we're stuck with the bad solution dominating the ecosystem unless and until enough people can throw their weight behind good solutions and play catchup... and yet people like you are still stuck on the "no solution required, damnit!" point of view.

    The psychological parallels between the systemd debacle and the Trump debacle are surprisingly deep. Both are cases where the existence of dire flaws in a proposed solution caused the judgment centers in brains of most detractors (or at least the most of the vocal detractors) to short-circuit.

    1. Re:Systemd is like Trump by ausekilis · · Score: 2

      The psychological parallels between the systemd debacle and the Trump debacle are surprisingly deep. Both are cases where the existence of dire flaws in a proposed solution caused the judgment centers in brains of most detractors (or at least the most of the vocal detractors) to short-circuit.

      Wait, is this some sort of 2016 version of Godwin's law?

      It's through the inaction of the influential masses that a poor decision has been made and now the community suffers. This is opposite of the Tragedy of the Commons, instead of the selfish actions of a few to the detriment of all, we have the inaction of a few to the detriment of all.

  18. Re:Interesting, but does it RUN LINUX? by troon · · Score: 2

    What is lmgtfy?

    (jk)

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