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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 Working on various drivers and kernel code in my day job
70 Debian kernel team member, now doing most of the unstable
71 maintenance aside from ports
74 Maintaining Linux 3.2.<var>y</var> stable update series on
81 <h1>Linux releases early and often</h1>
82 <ul class="incremental">
84 Linux is released about 5 times a year (plus stable updates
88 ...though some features aren't ready to use when they firat
94 Since my talk last year, Linus has made 6 releases (3.11-3.16)
97 Good news: we have lots of new kernel features in testing/unstable
100 Bad news: some of them won't really work without new userland
106 <h1>Team device driver [3.3]</h1>
107 <ul class="incremental">
109 Alternative to the bonding driver - simpler, modular, high-level
110 control deferred to userland
113 Basic configuration can be done with <tt>ip</tt>, but it really
114 needs new tools - <tt>teamd</tt>, <tt>teamnl</tt>, etc.
118 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/695850">http://bugs.debian.org/695850</a>
124 <h1>Transcendent memory [3.0-3.5]</h1>
125 <ul class="incremental">
127 Abstract storage for memory pages, expected to be slower than
128 regular memory but faster than disk
131 Can provide a second layer of page cache (cleancache and frontswap)
134 Pages stored by hypervisor (Xen), compressed local memory
135 (zcache) or cluster of machines (RAMster)
138 Not yet enabled in Debian kernels, and needs some thought about
143 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/454795/">https://lwn.net/Articles/454795/</a>
144 and send proposal to debian-kernel
150 <h1>New KMS drivers [3.3-3.10]</h1>
151 <ul class="incremental">
153 DRM/KMS drivers added for old, new and virtual hardware -
154 AST, DisplayLink, Hyper-V, Matrox G200, QEMU Cirrus
157 Should be more robust than purely user-mode drivers, and
158 compatible with Secure Boot
161 Current X drivers don't work with these, so the kernel drivers
165 Make it work: join the X Strike Force and package the new X
172 <h1>Module signing [3.7]</h1>
173 <ul class="incremental">
175 Kernel modules can be signed at build time, and the kernel
176 configured to refuse loading unsigned modules
179 Necessary but not sufficient to implement Secure Boot -
180 we would also need signed kernel images and some other
181 restrictions when booted in this mode
184 Make Secure Boot work: come to the meeting on Tuesday
190 <h1>More support for discard</h1>
191 <ul class="incremental">
193 Flash devices (and thin-provisioned SANs) can be more efficient
194 if the filesystem 'discards' unused disk space
197 Requires support in hardware, driver, filesystem and any layered
198 device drivers - e.g. LVM, RAID (added in 3.7)
201 Must be explicitly enabled, but d-i doesn't do this by default
204 Make it work: fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/690977">http://bugs.debian.org/690977</a>
210 <h1>More support for containers</h1>
211 <ul class="incremental">
213 Containers are lightweight VMs - run on the same kernel as host,
214 but with limited privileges and resources
217 Previously done by OpenVZ and Linux-VServer; gradually being
218 reimplemented upstream
221 User namespaces (added in 3.7) support the existence of a
222 <tt>root</tt> user inside the container that is unprivileged
223 outside the container
226 Currently somewhat experimental, and requires filesystem
227 changes which haven't been done for XFS
230 Make user namespaces work: send patches to upstream XFS
231 developers (this one's hard)
237 <h1>bcache [3.10]</h1>
238 <ul class="incremental">
240 Turns a fast block device into a cache for a larger, slower
241 device (see also: dm-cache, EnhanceIO)
244 Needs its own set of userland tools
248 see <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/708132">http://bugs.debian.org/708132</a>
249 (maybe just needs a sponsor)
255 <h1>ARMv7 multiplatform</h1>
256 <ul class="incremental">
258 Until recently, each ARM kernel image could support only a small
259 set of different chips
262 Debian 'armmp' kernel now supports ARMv7 SoCs from Calxeda,
263 Freescale and Marvell, and others should be supported soon
266 Debian could run on a much larger range of ARM hardware - but we
267 need installer and boot loader support to make this easy
270 Make it work: join the ARM porters and d-i team
273 Make the GPUs work: join a reverse-engineering project
286 Linux 'Tux' logo © Larry Ewing, Simon Budig.
288 Redistribution is free but has to include this notice.
291 <li>Modified by Ben to add Debian open-ND logo</li>
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