Linux 3.13 Kernel To Bring Major Feature Improvements 190
An anonymous reader writes "There's many improvements due in the Linux 3.13 kernel that just entered development. On the matter of new hardware support, there's open-source driver support for Intel Broadwell and AMD Radeon R9 290 'Hawaii' graphics. NFTables will eventually replace IPTables; the multi-queue block layer is supposed to make disk access much faster on Linux; HDMI audio has improved; Stereo/3D HDMI support is found for Intel hardware; file-system improvements are on the way, along with support for limiting the power consumption of individual PC components."
SteamOS Will 'Really Help' Linux On the Desktop (Score:1, Interesting)
"Linus Torvalds has welcomed the arrival of Valve's Linux-based platform, SteamOS, and said it could boost Linux on desktops. The Linux creator praised Valve's 'vision' and suggested its momentum would force other manufacturers to take Linux seriously — especially if game developers start to ditch Windows. Should SteamOS gain traction among gamers and developers, that could force more hardware manufacturers to extend driver support beyond Windows. That's a sore point for Torvalds, who slammed Nvidia last year for failing to support open-source driver development for its graphics chips. Now that SteamOS is on the way, Nvidia has opened up to the Linux community, something Torvalds predicts is a sign of things to come. 'I'm not just saying it'll help us get traction with the graphics guys,' he said. 'It'll also force different distributors to realize if this is how Steam is going, they need to do the same thing because they can't afford to be different in this respect. They want people to play games on their platform too.'"
Re:So many improvements (Score:5, Interesting)
Mehhh. I used to update my kernel as quickly as possible when they promised major improvements. It always turns out that a "major improvement" is actually an "incremental improvement". I lost the excitement over kernel upgrades some time ago. I still upgrade from time to time, but my attention is more focused on security than any supposed "improvements". I don't want to be the odd guy who is caught with some vulnerability that was fixed eight versions ago. Two versions, maybe - but eight? Nope, no way! That would be just to embarrassing.
Intel support is stellar this time. (Score:5, Interesting)
The temperatures in hell are dropping but I am not going to hold my breath as Windows still holds the retailers and manufacturers by the balls to say the least. However with both Intel and AMD actively supporting the Linux kernel this quickly for their most important product lines perhaps a manufacturer like Samsung or Lenovo might actually try to market a real full blown Linux based device for a change instead of just dabbling in Android consumer craptronic devices.
Re:Nice (Score:5, Interesting)
Teenagers don't question authority, by and large. They yell, throw tantrums, stomp their feet, and make a lot of noise, and then once that angst is out of their system, they promptly tend to get to doing whatever it is that the authorities have told them they should do to "get ahead".
In any case, it's not about authority here...the real issue is that to most teenagers, or most people in general, a computer is merely an entertainment device, rather than a powerful tool that can be tailored to one's own needs. It doesn't matter how easy the latest user-friendly scripting language gets, "programming" remains something they envision as involving binary and machine code, purely there for autistic folks and aliens.
What we really need is to integrate programming of SOME kind into the general curriculum of our schoolchildren. And for Christ's sake, leave enough holes open on the local school network for kids to have fun learning to poke holes in the restrictive environment you've set them up in. The classes teach them HOW to do things, and the rebelliousness of getting around the restrictions gets them interested in doing them (and then the combination of heavy handed laws and bug bounty programs bring them back into societal correctness once they enter adulthood...hopefully).
The absolute LAST thing kids need is a user friendly interface. Save those for grandma, give the kid a raspberry pi, a book on Python, and then put them up behind a firewall that blocks most anything their friends will be wasting their time with. Not because you want to keep the kid OFF of such sites, but to make them at least learn a thing or two from time to time in their attempts to waste time in an otherwise purely wasteful manner.
bcache is a HUGE improvement for some workloads (Score:5, Interesting)
Bcache, merged in 3.11, improves IO up to 100X. Not 100%, 100X, or 10,000%. It may well be worth an upgrade if you're running a distro 2.3x and have random IO on multi TB storage.
Re:Nice (Score:2, Interesting)
Nah just need to remove the absurd penalty involved if you get caught hacking the school network, at least as long as you don't use your exploits for any sort of personal gain. I had a lot of fun playing with the school network. Despite never once taking advantage to having full reign over the system I was thrown out of school for a year when I got caught. The effect it had on my life after school was enough to turn me away from hacking. In the 10 years since that was added to my record I have had a total of three jobs, I gave up even trying to find a normal job because I'm sick and tired of explaining it and getting turned away because of it.
What really added insult to injury was that the kids that picked fights on a regular bases almost always got detention for that, a couple got kicked out for a week, but none of them kicked out for a whole school year. It pisses me off so much that I'm shaking in anger just thinking about it.
Re:BTRFS stable when (Score:4, Interesting)
ZoL all the way. I know longer care if the BTRFS glacier _ever_ arrives.
I was hesitant, thinking ZoL was toy status, but I bit the bullet, installed and took the learning curve. It seems fully mature to me. I had confused ZoL with the ZFS Fuse toy, but ithey are completely separate things. ZoL is a high performance, reliable and mature "real" kernel mode file system.
Creating an 18TB double parity RAID-Z2 storage pool takes only a handful of seconds and is completely ready to go. There is no traditional long "build" stage. In general all "mkfs" operations are essentially instantaneous.
For me on CentOS6 it was a simple repo addition and "yum install". It hooks into DKMS for when I do future kernel upgrades.