Linux 3.8 Released

diegocg writes "Linux kernel 3.8 has been released. This release includes support in Ext4 for embedding very small files in the inode, which greatly improves the performance for these files and saves some disk space. There is also a new Btrfs feature that allows for quick disk replacement, a new filesystem F2FS optimized for SSDs; support for filesystem mount, UTS, IPC, PID, and network namespaces for unprivileged users; accounting of kernel memory in the memory resource controller; journal checksums in XFS; an improved NUMA policy redesign; and, of course, the removal of support for 386 processors. Many small features and new drivers and fixes are also available. Here's the full list of changes."

Re:I'm confused

[SJHillman]

0.01 - 1991
1.0 - 1994
1.2 - 1955
1.3 - 1995
2.0 - 1996
2.1 - 1996
2.2 - 1999
2.3 - 1999
2.4 - 2001
2.5 - 2001
2.6 - 2003
3.0 - 2011
3.2 - 2012

Of course, there were many smaller version numbers released in the meantime - 2.4.37.11 was released in 2011, ten years after 2.4.0.

Re:still supports 32-bit Intel binaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically the actual i386 family is no longer supported. The i486 family, including the 486SX (which doesn't even have floating point) are still technically supported by the Linux kernel, you just won't find very much software to run on them. So we're not just talking "before the Pentium" but further back in history. There are i486 PCs dating back to 1989, think Dead Poets Society. So Linux still runs on hardware that's older than Linux, just not hardware that was already /cheap/ when Linux began.

Re:still supports 32-bit Intel binaries

[peppepz]

Isn't it normal for any processor to have errata? There are currently 95 bugs listed for Ivy Bridge on Intel's site [intel.com]. There are 120 for Sandy Bridge [intel.com].

Re:F2FS is not for SSDs

[ssimmons]

No, F2FS is not meant for bare NAND and doesn't do wear-levelling. It is meant for cheap flash media such as USB flash drives, SD cards, eMMC and such. Those devices have controllers that perform wear-levelling and other flash-translation layer functions. They present as block devices just like SSDs and regular hard drives. Conventional filesystems such as ext4 are optimized for spinning-rust and have to manage things like the fact that random access takes a significant amount of time while it has to wait for the next sector to come underneath the read/write head. With flash media, the seek time is zero but erasing a block takes a long time. There are of course many other differences. F2FS is designed to exploit the advantages of flash media and cope with the disadvantages. That said, I don't think I'd want to run F2FS on an SSD. SSDs have sophisticated controllers that try to compensate for the advantages and disadvantages of flash media with respect to conventional filesystems. I think you'd wind up with F2FS fighting it out with the SSD controller and I think perform would suffer as a consequence.