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43 <h2>What's new in the Linux kernel</h2>
48 <div class="presentation">
51 <h1>What's new in the Linux kernel</h1>
52 <object data="tux-debian.svg" width="35%" align="right"></object>
53 <h2>and what's missing in Debian</h2>
54 <h3>Ben Hutchings</h3>
58 <h1>Ben Hutchings</h1>
61 Professional software engineer by day, Debian developer by night
64 Regular Linux contributor in both roles since 2008
67 Maintaining a net driver in my day job, plus core networking
68 and PCI code as necessary
71 Debian kernel team member, now doing most of the unstable
72 maintenance aside from ports
75 Maintaining Linux 3.2.<var>y</var> stable update series on
82 <h1>Linux releases early and often</h1>
83 <ul class="incremental">
85 Linux is released about 5 times a year (plus stable updates
89 For 'wheezy' we chose to freeze with Linux 3.2, which was
90 getting pretty old by the time of release
93 Good news: we have lots of new kernel features in testing/unstable
96 Bad news: some of them won't really work without new userland
102 <h1>Team device driver [3.3]</h1>
103 <ul class="incremental">
105 Alternative to the bonding driver - simpler, modular, high-level
106 control deferred to userland
109 Basic configuration can be done with <tt>ip</tt>, but it really
110 needs new tools - <tt>teamd</tt>, <tt>teamnl</tt>, etc.
114 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/695850">http://bugs.debian.org/695850</a>
120 <h1>Transcendent memory [3.0-3.5]</h1>
121 <ul class="incremental">
123 Abstract storage for memory pages, expected to be slower than
124 regular memory but faster than disk
127 Can provide a second layer of page cache (cleancache and frontswap)
130 Pages stored by hypervisor (Xen), compressed local memory
131 (zcache) or cluster of machines (RAMster)
134 Not yet enabled in Debian kernels, and needs some thought about
139 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/454795/">https://lwn.net/Articles/454795/</a>
140 and send proposal to debian-kernel
146 <h1>New KMS drivers [3.3-3.10]</h1>
147 <ul class="incremental">
149 DRM/KMS drivers added for old, new and virtual hardware -
150 AST, DisplayLink, Hyper-V, Matrox G200, QEMU Cirrus
153 Should be more robust than purely user-mode drivers, and
154 compatible with Secure Boot
157 Current X drivers don't work with these, so the kernel drivers
161 Make it work: join the X Strike Force and package the new X
168 <h1>Module signing [3.7]</h1>
169 <ul class="incremental">
171 Kernel modules can be signed at build time, and the kernel
172 configured to refuse loading unsigned modules
175 Necessary but not sufficient to implement Secure Boot -
176 we would also need signed kernel images and some other
177 restrictions when booted in this mode
180 Make Secure Boot work: come to the meeting on Tuesday
186 <h1>More support for discard</h1>
187 <ul class="incremental">
189 Flash devices (and thin-provisioned SANs) can be more efficient
190 if the filesystem 'discards' unused disk space
193 Requires support in hardware, driver, filesystem and any layered
194 device drivers - e.g. LVM, RAID (added in 3.7)
197 Must be explicitly enabled, but d-i doesn't do this by default
200 Make it work: fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/690977">http://bugs.debian.org/690977</a>
206 <h1>More support for containers</h1>
207 <ul class="incremental">
209 Containers are lightweight VMs - run on the same kernel as host,
210 but with limited privileges and resources
213 Previously done by OpenVZ and Linux-VServer; gradually being
214 reimplemented upstream
217 User namespaces (added in 3.7) support the existence of a
218 <tt>root</tt> user inside the container that is unprivileged
219 outside the container
222 Currently somewhat experimental, and requires filesystem
223 changes which haven't been done for XFS
226 Make user namespaces work: send patches to upstream XFS
227 developers (this one's hard)
233 <h1>bcache [3.10]</h1>
234 <ul class="incremental">
236 Turns a fast block device into a cache for a larger, slower
237 device (see also: dm-cache, EnhanceIO)
240 Needs its own set of userland tools
244 see <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/708132">http://bugs.debian.org/708132</a>
245 (maybe just needs a sponsor)
251 <h1>ARMv7 multiplatform</h1>
252 <ul class="incremental">
254 Until recently, each ARM kernel image could support only a small
255 set of different chips
258 Debian 'armmp' kernel now supports ARMv7 SoCs from Calxeda,
259 Freescale and Marvell, and others should be supported soon
262 Debian could run on a much larger range of ARM hardware - but we
263 need installer and boot loader support to make this easy
266 Make it work: join the ARM porters and d-i team
269 Make the GPUs work: join a reverse-engineering project
282 Linux 'Tux' logo © Larry Ewing, Simon Budig.
284 Redistribution is free but has to include this notice.
287 <li>Modified by Ben to add Debian open-ND logo</li>
291 Debian open-ND logo © Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
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