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Operating Systems Linux

Linus Torvalds Went Six Days Without Electricity, Swears Smaller 5.12 Kernel Is Co-Incidental (theregister.com) 58

Linux overlord Linus Torvalds has revealed that inclement weather in the USA meant he recently endured six electricity-free days in his Portland, Oregon, home during which he was unable to tend to the kernel. As a result he therefore pondered adding an extra week to the merge window for version 5.12 of the Linux kernel. The Register reports: "As you can tell, I didn't do that," he said in his State of The Kernel update that announced release candidate one of the new kernel cut. "To a large part because people were actually very good about sending in their pull requests, so by the time I finally got power back, everything was nicely lined up and I got things merged up ok." It wasn't just penguinistas behaving well that helped. Torvalds said this version of the kernel has received around 10,000 commits. That's rather fewer than the 12,000 or 13,000 he usually sees.

In case anyone was inconvenienced by blackout-induced inability to merge, Torvalds said he's open to help any kernel devs for whom his unavailability caused problems but is not open to all late pulls. Torvalds rated the new release as offering "a fair amount of historical cleanup" on account of "removing the legacy OPROFILE support (the user tools have been using the "perf" interface for years), and removing several legacy SoC platforms and various drivers that no longer make any sense." Among the big inclusions in 5.12 are Clang Link-Time Optimizations, which make for better compiler performance, and support for Intel's eASIC NX5 silicon that aims to offer an alternative to FPGAs in edge and cloud applications. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 5G SoC also gains support.

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Linus Torvalds Went Six Days Without Electricity, Swears Smaller 5.12 Kernel Is Co-Incidental

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  • Backup? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Andrew Lindh ( 137790 ) on Monday March 01, 2021 @09:27PM (#61114104)

    What? No backup power? You always need backups...

    • Re:Backup? (Score:5, Funny)

      by preflex ( 1840068 ) on Monday March 01, 2021 @09:36PM (#61114134)

      Linus can't put his power company on FTP and let the whole world mirror it.

    • Seriously?

      If you're not trying to make a pun (system "backups") and are actually requesting that someone must have a 6-day backup power... ...then why not gift him a power central? Unless you have a huge battery system connected with wind mill or solar panels you're no good.

      • by rahmrh ( 939610 )

        1hr UPS + 5.5k portable generator + 72 gallons of gasoline covers 5 days. It will run critical things such as all freezers, fridges, and most importantly the power needed by the natural gas heater to run its blower.

        If you switch down to a 2k generator the 72 gallons of gas becomes 30 or so.

      • Re:Backup? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by fph il quozientatore ( 971015 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @08:08AM (#61115358)
        It is cheaper to just drive to a hotel outside of the affected area.
  • and dealing with 14 years of shotgunned 64K ISDN.
  • by labnet ( 457441 )

    So whats the plan if Linus is hit by a bus?

    • Re:Bus (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 01, 2021 @09:43PM (#61114160)

      He's in Oregon so is more likely to die from dysentery,

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by ClueHammer ( 6261830 )
      Microsoft will swoop in and delete everything.
      • All git clones and forks on the entire planet?

        This is only funny if you're stupid.

        • Most jokes are quite terrible if you stop an examine them really hard for factual subject matter, realism, and likelihood of actually happening in real life. So I guess it's your choice: you can laugh at the intended spirit of the joke, or just be a buzzkill.

          Eddie Murphey:
          BAReFO0t: That is only funny if you are stupid. Bears and rabbits don't talk. And bears don't have opposable thumbs so the bear would find it pretty difficult to merely hold the rabbit, much less wipe its ass with it.

          • damn it...I need to learn to preview. I spelled Eddie Murphy's name wrong, and there was supposed to be a bear and rabbit joke reference there. Oh well, hopefully you get the point.

            • Microsoft owns and controls github. Its not as far fetched as you think. I'm sure they are working on acquiring the other platforms....
    • That's why token ring is safer.

    • Linus would be fine. The scrap metal that hit him, not so much.

      I'm sure bus companies have insurance policies for colliding with superheroes, under acts of $DEITY.

    • Signaling a bus error, of course.
    • Greg Kroah-Hartman is already taking over a lot of what Linus used to do. He's the designated successor. Also each part of the kernel has a leader and deputy.

      I don't know offhand what the plan is of Greg and Linus are hit by the same bus, but there is a plan. Andrew Morton could step in.

  • In the UK there is outrage when people lose power for six hours.

    • by Hall ( 962 )
      They do here as well but after a bit, what does the bitchin' accomplish ? We live a looonggg way from the Gulf of Mexico but we got remnants of Hurricane Ike one year. We lost power for a few hours while neighbors around the block had no power for 14 days ! Why ? The 'individual' feeder power line for their homes ran to just 10 homes. If his was out for 6 days, he must live in a pretty rural location or a similar scenario to our neighbors... Those are the lowest priority for getting repaired.
    • In the UK there is outrage when people lose power for six hours.

      How many outages are caused by drizzle?

      In America, we have real weather, hurricanes, thunderstorms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.

      The coldest temperature ever recorded in Britain was -17F in the Scottish Highlands. In Minnesota or North Dakota, we can go for weeks without the thermometer going that high.

      A typical summer day in Las Vegas is 20 degrees hotter than the warmest ever recorded in England.

      • None. It's not caised by the weather, because that would be ridiculous unless something happens that has the same effect on a massive concrete building than a nuke. (E.g. Fukishima)

        Also, you are saying you can't design your facilities to work for weather that is to be expected?
        Well, funny, when both Finland and the UAE don't have that problem, and have more extreme temperatures.

      • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

        Stop your dick-waving. There are other places with what you call "real weather". Australia gets category 5 cyclones, too. Fortunately we managed to avoid things like tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanoes. It's just the flora and fauna we need to watch out for.

        Anyway, the issue that should be discussed and debated is what another poster said - "what about backups?". Referring to electricity, not the duplication of bytes.

        Look at your last electricity bill. Look at the peak power draw, and the daily watt-hour

        • It's just the flora and fauna we need to watch out for.

          Having lived in our midwest for a while, I saw my share of tornados.
          I survived a major volcanic explosion, (though living in a suburb of Seattle, there wasn't that much risk to us).
          I've even been in a 6.8M earthquake.

          None of those things freak me out like pictures of Australian spiders eating fucking birds.

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Anyway, the issue that should be discussed and debated is what another poster said - "what about backups?". Referring to electricity, not the duplication of bytes.

          Look at your last electricity bill. Look at the peak power draw, and the daily watt-hour usage. The former will tell you how big a generator you'll need, and the latter will tell you how much fuel to stockpile. You could also extend it with a battery, but please don't pick the cheapest - pick the best. The worst time to regret a stingy purchase is

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      In my area, there's an outrage when power is out for six (mili/nano)seconds. :P

  • What happens to Linux when Linus is gone?
  • The last stable release had about the average amount of commits as well and is an LTS. I'm remembering the days of 75k commits just to cut it down to 5k workable ones.. That is progress.
    • Actually 5.10 was the LTS kernel I was thinking of. I don't know if 5.11 is or not but it was smallish commit wise as well.
      • Is the smaller size due to the removal of older architectures? I seemed to remember that the next versions of Linux would remove some older CPUs and architectures but do not know if that happened yet.
  • I live near Austin Texas and it got pretty bad here, but I lucked out. I thought the Portland area didn't get hit hard. I'm pretty sure he doesn't like in Portland proper but near Lake Oswego.

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