Linux Kernel 4.11 Officially Released (softpedia.com)

prisoninmate quotes Softpedia: Linux kernel 4.11 has been in development for the past two months, since very early March, when the first Release Candidate arrived for public testing. Eight RCs later, we're now able to download and compile the final release of Linux 4.11 on our favorite GNU/Linux distributions and enjoy its new features. Prominent ones include scalable swapping for SSDs, a brand new perf ftrace tool, support for OPAL drives, support for the SMC-R (Shared Memory Communications-RDMA) protocol, journalling support for MD RAID5, all new statx() system call to replace stat(2), and persistent scrollback buffers for VGA consoles... The Linux 4.11 kernel also introduces initial support for Intel Gemini Lake chips, which is an Atom-based, low-cost computer processor family developed using Intel's 14-nanometer technology, and better power management for AMD Radeon GPUs when the AMDGPU open-source graphics driver is used.

Comments

API/ABI fixes

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Welcome another round of API/ABI breakage: even the latest beta NVIDIA drivers 381.09 are not compatible with this kernel. Here's a dirty hack/patch to resolve the incompatibility.

VMWare Workstation/Player 12.5.5 also needs some love.

VirtualBox has already been made compatible. Thanks, Oracle for keeping it up to date.

Lastly, a human readable changelog is always where you expect to find it: https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.11.

Re:API/ABI fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

You have your terminology wrong. The nVidia drivers are not using an API or ABI, they are hooking drectly into the kernel. That's why they keep having problems with new versions that change internals.

Meanwhile, changing an ABI is as close to a firing offense as you can get with open source software (which will result in a slashdot post about Linus' use of profanities), and API changes are only acceptable as long as the old ABI is kept in place.

Re: API/ABI fixes

[Zero__Kelvin]

So basically, you just want to broadcast to us all that you have no idea what you are talking about, and no experience with the Linux kernel development model? Congratulations! EPIC SUCCESS!

Big THANK YOU to all contributors

[Anonymous Coward]

A big THANK YOU for all the hard work to all contributors.

I cannot imagine using a system built on top of anything else than Linux.
The worldwide supercomputers and HPC clusters tend to agree with me ;-)

Re: Testing...

[Zero__Kelvin]

I'm pretty sure you have to actually think before you use the word "methinks" properly.

Meanwhile in opensource land...

[DrYak]

Welcome another round of API/ABI breakage: even the latest beta NVIDIA drivers 381.09 are not compatible with this kernel.

Meanwhile, opensource drivers, that are part of the kernel all work.

Intel's opensource driver :
- development paid by Intel themselves
- works with Intel's own opensource openGL driver)
IT WORKS

AMD's opensource driver :
- development paid, among other, by AMD themselves (but also by Valve)
- works with both the opensource driver (whose developement was among other paid by AMD, and is considered the future official driver)
- and the closed source AMDGPU-PRO (that AMD is putting, until the opensource catches up (openCL and Vulkan not up to par yet *) and for the few professional CAD workstation users that needs some weird feature that AMD is never bothering to port to Mesa)
IT WORKS.

Only NVIDIA persist in doing things their way (because it enables them to simply cross-compile** their Windows drivers to Linux, even if that breaks most facilities used by everybody else - see Optimus, etc.).
And only collaborates once in a bluemoon with the Nouveau developpers when it helps their agenda with Tegra mobile GPUs (where Linux support is a must).
(And because of that, even the opensource Nouveau that had to be developped from scratch by unrelated 3rd parties - is problematic)
INSERT LINUS' "FUCK YOU NVIDIA" PIC

So stop blaming Linux dev's for Nvidia's wrong doings.
Everyone else plays nicely with Linux and it works.
Only Nvidia decide to fuck up everything and go against everyone else and you see the end result.

---

* : OpenCL is in the process of getting ported by AMD on their ROCm opensource computing platform. Once that is done, AMD will officially have a good quality opensource OpenCL.
Vulkan: has a closed source implementation inside AMDGPU-PRO that AMD has promised they'll opensource (but they're VERY LATE with the legal review necessary to release the code). Meanwhile a couple of opensource developpers have released RADV which works with most Vulkan games (including through Wine), but isn't complete (still misses tons of extensions that aren't widespread in game) and isn't very performant yet (well of course, it's a very recent addition) (AMD has considered putting priority to opensourcing of those bits of AMDGPU-PRO's Vulkan that could also help RADV developpers the most. But again, they're really behind with these opensourcing efforts.)

** - AMD decided to go the other way around : they wrote an entirely new abstraction layer (called DAL / DC) to be both usable under Windows and Linux and for closed source and Mesa drivers.
Problem : that layer has been written by veteran *windows* developpers at AMD, not AMD's usual opensource inhouse crew.
And it shows.
It makes Linus' eyes bleed.
So currently it's not yet in vanilla kernel, it's still being reworked into something more acceptable.
Once it's done, the last few missing features (e.g.: HDMI, Freesync, etc.) should also work with maintstream kernel on Radeon GPUs.

Re:Meanwhile in opensource land...

[CRC'99]

Alternate version - nVidia stuff has been outperforming AMD for decades. Only the latest generation of AMD card is somewhat useful - and it benchmarks well below any nVidia card.

For years, the nVidia driver has had the odd quibble, but has worked fine. AMD's drivers over that same timeframe have been horrible.

Don't whitewash the history of how things rolled out due to the latest 6 months of development work by AMD....

Re:Meanwhile in opensource land...

[StormReaver]

Alternate version - nVidia stuff has been outperforming AMD for decades.

Yep, and for the longest time, my advice had always been, "just buy NVidia, and be done with it. ATI Linux support sucks, while NVidia's is much b" But I am not brand loyal (brand loyalty is such a bizarre behavior). I support whichever company best addresses my needs. In the past, that was NVidia; that was because ATI was just as abusive as NVidia, but their Linux integration was atrocious.

But things started to change with AMD released its full documentation. At that point, the scales starting tipping in AMD's favor. Then, when the Open Source driver stabilized and mature enough to be useful, NVidia's Linux integration showed its flaws. AMD cards integrate into the Linux desktop seamlessly, while NVidia's driver started to look painfully ugly.

Frame rates are great, but aesthetics are highly important as well. The AMDGPU driver looks much better than NVidia's driver, from bootup to shutdown.

Aesthetics aside, NVidia's drivers have big performance problems on Linux, which I didn't really notice until I started putting AMD cards into my machines. The KDE desktop is smooth and fluid with AMD cards, while it is jerky and annoying with NVidia cards. For business computer use, AMD is a far better choice.

persistent scrollback buffers for VGA consoles

[bill_mcgonigle]

Kudos to Manuel for fixing this thing that's annoyed me for a good twenty years.

Impressive how small the feature patch is!

I'll be setting vgacon.scrollback_persistent=1 on my bare-metal x86 machines.