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7 <title>What's new in the Linux kernel - DebConf 2013</title>
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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 ...though some features aren't ready to use when they firat
95 For 'wheezy' we chose to freeze with Linux 3.2, which was
96 getting pretty old by the time of release
99 Good news: we have lots of new kernel features in testing/unstable
102 Bad news: some of them won't really work without new userland
108 <h1>Team device driver [3.3]</h1>
109 <ul class="incremental">
111 Alternative to the bonding driver - simpler, modular, high-level
112 control deferred to userland
115 Basic configuration can be done with <tt>ip</tt>, but it really
116 needs new tools - <tt>teamd</tt>, <tt>teamnl</tt>, etc.
120 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/695850">http://bugs.debian.org/695850</a>
126 <h1>Transcendent memory [3.0-3.5]</h1>
127 <ul class="incremental">
129 Abstract storage for memory pages, expected to be slower than
130 regular memory but faster than disk
133 Can provide a second layer of page cache (cleancache and frontswap)
136 Pages stored by hypervisor (Xen), compressed local memory
137 (zcache) or cluster of machines (RAMster)
140 Not yet enabled in Debian kernels, and needs some thought about
145 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/454795/">https://lwn.net/Articles/454795/</a>
146 and send proposal to debian-kernel
152 <h1>New KMS drivers [3.3-3.10]</h1>
153 <ul class="incremental">
155 DRM/KMS drivers added for old, new and virtual hardware -
156 AST, DisplayLink, Hyper-V, Matrox G200, QEMU Cirrus
159 Should be more robust than purely user-mode drivers, and
160 compatible with Secure Boot
163 Current X drivers don't work with these, so the kernel drivers
167 Make it work: join the X Strike Force and package the new X
174 <h1>Module signing [3.7]</h1>
175 <ul class="incremental">
177 Kernel modules can be signed at build time, and the kernel
178 configured to refuse loading unsigned modules
181 Necessary but not sufficient to implement Secure Boot -
182 we would also need signed kernel images and some other
183 restrictions when booted in this mode
186 Make Secure Boot work: come to the meeting on Tuesday
192 <h1>More support for discard</h1>
193 <ul class="incremental">
195 Flash devices (and thin-provisioned SANs) can be more efficient
196 if the filesystem 'discards' unused disk space
199 Requires support in hardware, driver, filesystem and any layered
200 device drivers - e.g. LVM, RAID (added in 3.7)
203 Must be explicitly enabled, but d-i doesn't do this by default
206 Make it work: fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/690977">http://bugs.debian.org/690977</a>
212 <h1>More support for containers</h1>
213 <ul class="incremental">
215 Containers are lightweight VMs - run on the same kernel as host,
216 but with limited privileges and resources
219 Previously done by OpenVZ and Linux-VServer; gradually being
220 reimplemented upstream
223 User namespaces (added in 3.7) support the existence of a
224 <tt>root</tt> user inside the container that is unprivileged
225 outside the container
228 Currently somewhat experimental, and requires filesystem
229 changes which haven't been done for XFS
232 Make user namespaces work: send patches to upstream XFS
233 developers (this one's hard)
239 <h1>bcache [3.10]</h1>
240 <ul class="incremental">
242 Turns a fast block device into a cache for a larger, slower
243 device (see also: dm-cache, EnhanceIO)
246 Needs its own set of userland tools
250 see <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/708132">http://bugs.debian.org/708132</a>
251 (maybe just needs a sponsor)
257 <h1>ARMv7 multiplatform</h1>
258 <ul class="incremental">
260 Until recently, each ARM kernel image could support only a small
261 set of different chips
264 Debian 'armmp' kernel now supports ARMv7 SoCs from Calxeda,
265 Freescale and Marvell, and others should be supported soon
268 Debian could run on a much larger range of ARM hardware - but we
269 need installer and boot loader support to make this easy
272 Make it work: join the ARM porters and d-i team
275 Make the GPUs work: join a reverse-engineering project
288 Linux 'Tux' logo © Larry Ewing, Simon Budig.
290 Redistribution is free but has to include this notice.
293 <li>Modified by Ben to add Debian open-ND logo</li>
297 Debian open-ND logo © Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
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