Rust Drama, Russian Kernel Maintainers & Other Top Linux Kernel Happenings Of 2024
Below is a look at the most popular news around the Linux kernel on Phoronix during 2024... An interesting mix of technical items and then other general happenings within the open-source kernel land.
Linus Torvalds Comments On The Russian Linux Maintainers Being Delisted
Following yesterday's news first featured on Phoronix of several Linux driver maintainers being de-listed from their maintainer positions within the mainline Linux kernel over their connections to Russia, Linus Torvalds has today commented on the matter.
One Of The Rust Linux Kernel Maintainers Steps Down - Cites "Nontechnical Nonsense"
One of the several Rust for Linux kernel maintainers has decided to step away from the project. The move is being driven at least in part due to having to deal with increased "nontechnical nonsense" raised around Rust programming language use within the Linux kernel.
A 2024 Discussion Whether To Convert The Linux Kernel From C To Modern C++
A six year old Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been reignited over the prospects of converting the Linux kernel to supporting modern C++ code.
Several Linux Kernel Driver Maintainers Removed Due To Their Association To Russia
Quietly merged into this week's Linux 6.12-rc4 kernel was a patch that removes a number of kernel maintainers from being noted in the official MAINTAINERS file that recognizes all of the driver and subsystem maintainers.
Linus Torvalds Lands A 2.6% Performance Improvement With Minor Linux Kernel Patch
Linus Torvalds merged a patch on Wednesday that he authored that with reworking a few lines of code is able to score a 2.6% improvement within Intel's well-exercise "will it scale" per-thread-ops benchmark test case.
Rust-Written Linux Scheduler Showing Promising Results For Gaming Performance
A Canonical engineer has been experimenting with implementing a Linux scheduler within the Rust programming language. His early results are interesting and hopeful around the potential of a Rust-based scheduler that works via sched_ext for implementing a scheduler using eBPF that can be loaded during run-time.
Linus Torvalds Begins Expressing Regrets Merging Bcachefs
There's been some Friday night kernel drama on the Linux kernel mailing list... Linus Torvalds has expressed regrets for merging the Bcachefs file-system and an ensuing back-and-forth between the file-system maintainer.
Linus Torvalds Comes Out Against "Completely Broken" x86_64 Feature Levels
With the new Linux kernel patches posted yesterday for cleaning up x86 32-bit kernels on x86_64 CPUs as part of that patch series was introducing new Kconfig build options around the x86_64 micro-architecture feature levels. It turns out though that Torvalds is completely against how the x86_64 feature levels are handled by the compiler toolchain folks and doesn't want to see it invading the kernel.
Some Clarity On The Linux Kernel's "Compliance Requirements" Around Russian Sanctions
When a number of Russian Linux developers were removed from their MAINTAINERS file in the Linux kernel, it was described as due to "compliance requirements" but vague in what those requirements entailed. Linus Torvalds then commented on the Russian Linux maintainers being de-listed and made it clear that they were done due to government compliance requirements / legal issues around Russia. Now today some additional light has been shed on those new Linux kernel "compliance requirements".
Linus Torvalds Hits Nasty Performance Regression With Early Linux 6.8 Code
It's not too often hearing Linus Torvalds himself raising the alarm bells over performance regressions of the Linux kernel, but that happened this evening with the ongoing Linux 6.8 merge window. Torvalds' AMD Ryzen Threadripper system suddenly was suffering from much longer build times at least as a result of new code for this kernel.
Linux's New DRM Panic "Blue Screen of Death" In Action
After being talked about for years of DRM panic handling and coming with a "Blue Screen of Death" solution for DRM/KMS drivers, Linux 6.10 is introducing a new DRM panic handler infrastructure for being able to display a message when a panic occurs. This is especially important for those building a kernel without VT/FBCON support where otherwise viewing the kernel panic message isn't otherwise easily available.
Linus Torvalds Growing Frustrated By Buggy Hardware & Theoretical CPU Attacks
Over the past week Linux creator Linus Torvalds has been active on a Linux kernel mailing list thread around avoiding barrier_nospec() in copy_from_user() due to being "overkill and painfully slow." The conversation evolved into low-level discussions over CPU behavior and how to best handle, differing behavior/requirements with new Intel CPUs supporting Linear Address Masking (LAM), and the overall headaches these days around CPU security mitigations.
Linux CoC Announces Decision Following Recent Bcachefs Drama
Following the recent messaging from Bcachefs lead developer Kent Oversteet that Bcachefs changes for Linux 6.13 were rejected on the basis of his Code of Conduct, the Linux CoC committee has now formally announced their decision.
Linux Will Be Able To Boot ~0.035 Seconds Faster With One Line Kernel Patch
The Linux kernel itself can already boot quite fast but with a simple one-line patch another ~0.035 seconds will be able to be shaved off the boot time.
Torvalds Has It With "-Wstringop-overflow" On GCC Due To Kernel Breakage
One of the new features for Linux 6.8 that was merged late was enabling the -Wstringop-overflow compiler option to warn about possible buffer overflows in cases where the compiler can detect such possible overflows at compile-time. While it's nice in theory, issues on GCC has led Linus Torvalds to disabling this compiler option as of now Linux 6.8.
Linus Torvalds Injects Tabs To Thwart Kconfig Parsers Not Correctly Handling Them
Within yesterday's Linux 6.9-rc4 release is an interesting little nugget by Linus Torvalds to battle Kconfig parsers that can't correctly handle tabs but rather just assume spaces for whitespace for this kernel configuration format.
Linux 6.12 To Optionally Display A QR Code During Kernel Panics
Submitted today via DRM-Misc-Next to DRM-Next for staging ahead of the Linux 6.12 merge window in mid-September is optional support for displaying a QR code within the DRM Panic handler infrastructure when a Linux kernel panic occurs.
Bcachefs Fixes Pull Once Again Frustrates Linus Torvalds - Two Choices Offered
Linus Torvalds merged the newest round of fixes to the experimental Bcachefs file-system, but it's left Linux creator Linus Torvalds frustrated and he's presented two choices for the file-system moving forward due to the continued LKML drama.
Linus Torvalds Is Doing More ARM64 Linux Testing Now That He Has A More Powerful System
Linux kernel and Git creator Linus Torvalds is known for his current use of an AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation as his main system after years of using Intel hardware. The past few years he's also been doing more ARM64 testing now that he has an Apple MacBook using Apple Silicon that serves as a nice travel device and for routinely compiling new ARM64 Linux kernel builds. More recently, his ARM64 Linux testing has increased now that he has a more powerful AArch64 system to complement his collection of routine gear.
Linus Torvalds On Linux 6.8 DRM: "Testing Is Seriously Lacking"
While the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display driver updates for Linux 6.8 excitingly include the new Intel "Xe" DRM and PowerVR Imagination drivers, AMD color management properties in experimental form, Raspberry Pi 5 graphics support, and more, Linus Torvalds isn't happy with some of the new Intel Xe driver code.
Torvalds Voices Thoughts On Linux Mitigating Unexpected Arithmetic Overflows/Underflows
For those interested in some insightful Linux kernel mailing list reading this weekend, there's been a vibrant discussion on the ability for the Linux kernel to mitigate unexpected arithmetic overflows/underflows/wraparounds.
Linus Torvalds Throws Down The Hammer: Extensible Scheduler "sched_ext" In Linux 6.11
The extensible scheduler "sched_ext" code has proven quite versatile for opening up better Linux gaming performance, more quickly prototyping new scheduler changes, Ubuntu/Canonical has been evaluating it for pursuing a more micro-kernel like design, and many other interesting approaches with it. Yet it's remained out of tree but that is now changing with the upcoming Linux 6.11 cycle.
Linux's DRM Panic "Screen of Death" Sees Patches For QR Code Error Messages
Linux 6.10 introduces DRM Panic for providing a new panic screen in case of kernel errors and situations where the VT support may be disabled. This new kernel functionality is akin to Windows' Blue Screen of Death or thanks to open-source can be adapted to take on other forms such as a black screen of death and conveying monochrome logos rather than ASCII art. New patches provide for the ability to show QR codes of error messages within the DRM Panic screens.
Linux 6.10 Preps A Kernel Panic Screen - Sort Of A "Blue Screen of Death"
While systemd 255 last year introduced a "blue screen of death" inspired solution with systemd-bsod for presenting logged error messages full-screen, it's not appropriate for all errors. Systemd-bsod can work out for presenting full-screen messages in case of boot failures and other problems where user-space is alive. But the user-space code does little good in case of a kernel panic and similar issues bringing the system to a halt. Set to be introduced now with Linux 6.10 is a parallel "blue screen of death" like error presenting experience with the introduction of the DRM panic handler.
Meta Sees ~5% Performance Gains To Optimizing The Linux Kernel With BOLT
For years Meta/Facebook has been exploring using BOLT with the Linux kernel to optimize the layout of the Linux kernel binary. Since BOLT was upstreamed into LLVM, they've continued work around BOLT'ing the kernel. There is now a public guide for carrying out a BOLT-optimized Linux kernel build and roughly 5% better system performance to expect from such an optimized kernel.
Debian Orphans Bcachefs-Tools: "Impossible To Maintain In Debian Stable"
Even before the Bcachefs file-system driver was accepted into the mainline kernel, Debian for the past five years has offered a "bcachefs-tools" package to provide the user-space programs to this copy-on-write file-system. It was simple at first when it was simple C code but since the Bcachefs tools transitioned to Rust, it's become an unmaintainable mess for stable-minded distribution vendors. As such the bcachefs-tools package has now been orphaned by Debian.
Linux 6.10 Will Print The Number Of Populated Memory Slots At Boot Time
As a small information heads up, the Linux 6.10 kernel will print the number of populated memory slots at boot time to the kernel log as a little helper.
Bcachefs Changes Rejected Reportedly Due To CoC, Kernel Future "Uncertain"
While the Bcachefs feature changes for Linux 6.13 were already submitted even before the Linux 6.12 stable kernel was released, merging these changes are supposedly on hold due to the kernel's Code of Conduct (CoC) board.
Linus Torvalds Begins The Linux 6.11 Merge Window By Merging Some Of His Own Code
Linus Torvalds began the Linux 6.11 merge window yesterday by merging some of his own feature code for this next kernel version.
Linux 6.13 Will Report The Number Of Hung Tasks Since Boot
Following all of the MM patches earlier this week sent in by Andrew Morton, on Sunday morning he sent out all of the non-MM patches that he manages for the Linux kernel. Notable for Linux 6.13 with this pull request is presenting the hung task counter as well as finishing off the folio conversion in the NILFS2 code.
Or summing up the Linux kernel year in visual form thanks to Grok AI:
What did you enjoy most out of the Linux kernel in 2024? What do you hope to see with regard to the Linux kernel in 2025? Let us know by commenting on this article in the forums for some interesting discussions over the holidays.
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