-What's new in the Linux kernel - DebConf 2013
+What's new in the Linux kernel - DebConf 2014
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
@@ -50,6 +50,7 @@
What's new in the Linux kernel
+
and what's missing in Debian
Ben Hutchings
@@ -61,20 +62,17 @@
Regular Linux contributor in both roles since 2008
-
-
- Maintaining a net driver in my day job, plus core networking
- and PCI code as necessary
-
-
- Debian kernel team member, now doing most of the unstable
- maintenance aside from ports
-
-
- Maintaining Linux 3.2.y stable update series on
- kernel.org
-
-
+
+
+ Working on various drivers and kernel code in my day job
+
+
+ Debian kernel team member, now doing most of the unstable
+ maintenance aside from ports
+
+
+ Maintaining Linux 3.2.y stable update series on
+ kernel.org
@@ -85,10 +83,15 @@
Linux is released about 5 times a year (plus stable updates
every week or two)
+
+
+ ...though some features aren't ready to use when they firat
+ appear in a release
+
+
- For 'wheezy' we chose to freeze with Linux 3.2, which was
- getting pretty old by the time of release
+ Since my talk last year, Linus has made 6 releases (3.11-3.16)
Good news: we have lots of new kernel features in testing/unstable
@@ -100,45 +103,45 @@
-
Team device driver [3.3]
+
Recap of last year's features (1)
- Alternative to the bonding driver - simpler, modular, high-level
- control deferred to userland
+ Team device driver: userland package (libteam) was uploaded in
+ October
+
+
+ Transcendent memory: frontswap, zswap and Xen tmem will be
+ enabled in next kernel upload
- Basic configuration can be done with ip, but it really
- needs new tools - teamd, teamnl, etc.
+ New KMS drivers: should all work with current Xorg drivers
- Want to make it work? See
- http://bugs.debian.org/695850
+ Module signing: still not enabled, but probably will be if we
+ do Secure Boot
-
Transcendent memory [3.0-3.5]
+
Recap of last year's features (2)
- Abstract storage for memory pages, expected to be slower than
- regular memory but faster than disk
-
-
- Can provide a second layer of page cache (cleancache and frontswap)
+ More support for discard: still not enabled at install time
+ (#690977)
- Pages stored by hypervisor (Xen), compressed local memory
- (zcache) or cluster of machines (RAMster)
+ More support for containers: XFS was fixed, and user namespaces
+ have been enabled
- Not yet enabled in Debian kernels, and needs some thought about
- configuration
+ bcache: userland package (bcache-tools) still not quite ready
+ (#708132)
- Want to make it work? See
- https://lwn.net/Articles/454795/
- and mail debian-kernel
+ ARMv7 multiplatform: d-i works on some platforms but
+ I'm still not sure which. Some progress on GPU drivers, but not
+ in Debian yet.