Linux 5.13 Kernel Released, Includes Apple M1 Support, Clang CFI, and Landlock's Linux Security Module (phoronix.com) 33
"Linus Torvalds has just released the Linux 5.13 kernel as stable," reports Phoronix:
Linux 5.13 brings initial but still early support for the Apple M1 with basic support but not yet accelerated graphics and a lot more to iron out moving ahead. There are also new Linux 5.13 security features like the Landlock security module, Clang control flow integrity support, and optionally randomizing the kernel stack offset at each system call. There is also AMD fun this cycle around FreeSync HDMI support, initial Aldebaran bring-up, and more. Intel has more work on Alder Lake, a new cooling driver, and more discrete graphics bring-up. There are also other changes for Linux 5.13 around faster IO_uring, a generic USB display driver, and other new hardware enablement.
"5.13 overall is actually fairly large," Linus Torvalds posted on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, calling it "one of the bigger 5.x releases, with over 16,000 commits (over 17k if you count merges), from over 2,000 developers. But it's a "big all over" kind of thing, not something particular that stands out as particularly unusual..."
"5.13 overall is actually fairly large," Linus Torvalds posted on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, calling it "one of the bigger 5.x releases, with over 16,000 commits (over 17k if you count merges), from over 2,000 developers. But it's a "big all over" kind of thing, not something particular that stands out as particularly unusual..."
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Wasn't this a feature that everyone was shitting on OpenBSD for doing?
Where? Here?
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King of the hill. (Score:3)
Over 2,000 developers. Just try and top that Windows 11.
Re:King of the hill. (Score:5, Insightful)
Over 2,000 developers. Just try and top that Windows 11.
You do know that Microsoft has 163,000 employees, right? They also have a microkernel design which moves a good chunk of functionality out to services. They could easily have even more developers working on the equivalent code.
I'm not a MS fan but I'm being realistic here.
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Over 2,000 developers. Just try and top that Windows 11.
You do know that Microsoft has 163,000 employees, right?
Yes, and lots of those people are not on the team that writes Microsoft Windows. Heck, lots of them are not developers writing any code at all and are support staff for data centers, legal and administrative staff, etc.
Re:King of the hill. (Score:5, Funny)
You do know that Microsoft has 163,000 employees, right?
Yeah, but 162,997 of those are employed to rearrange the start menu and flip all the window edges from round to square across different releases. The other three are Shirley, who hands the payroll, Willy, janitorial services, and Bob, who maintains the Windows kernel.
Re:King of the hill. (Score:4, Funny)
Not true.
Some Microsoft employees get to write code for the Linux kernel.
Re: King of the hill. (Score:1)
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Over 2,000 developers. Just try and top that Windows 11.
And prolly a good amount of those 2,000 are microsoft paid kernel developers :-P
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Yeah, because Microsoft doesn't pay multiple buildings full of people to write their sotware. Where do you think all of their code comes from, a team of 10 guys in a shed?
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Of course not! Don't be ridiculous. Only Fred's allowed to use the shed.
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If I can't break my own stuff then nobody else can either.
Hehe, sounds like a bet you're going to lose :)
Support M1 (Score:5, Informative)
If you wish to help the work on M1 support, have a look at donating to Hector Martin: https://twitter.com/marcan42/ [twitter.com]
Even the minimum level on Patreon grants you access to his streams.
I have to admit that I have no idea whether I'll ever use the results of his work, but damn, it's so much fun to see Linux running everywhere.
Re:Support M1 (Score:4, Interesting)
GPU support will always likely be half-assed because it's so hard to do correctly without vendor support, and Apple is not as interested in supporting the competition to their software ecosystem as they have been in the past... which was not actually very interested either. As such I suspect it's more useful in general to put your energy (including money) into something more likely to bear fruit than hacking a fruit machine.
Still missing important features (Score:2, Interesting)
Like a requirement for a face camera, UEFI, TPM and calling home
Anyone tried an ARM linux in a Mac Parallels VM? (Score:2)
FOSS software (Score:1)
is amazing. Less than a year ago, Torvalds said Linux probably wouldn't be ported to the M1. Accelerated graphics are still a major obstacle, but I suspect it'll be forthcoming.
When you want to add a feature in Windows, Microsoft has internal planning meetings, they have to dedicate internal resources, etc. etc. For Linux, you just look away for a moment and someone, somewhere in the world will have coded it up.
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Torvalds said Linux probably wouldn't be ported to the M1.
No he said the GPU and surrounding proprietary hardware would be the hard bit, that's the bit that hasn't been done. If you look at the Freedreno or Panfrost projects you can see what a long play just getting GPU support would be, not to mention all the rest of the hardware. The iPhone linux project is a good example too, seems like every revision of the iPhone somebody gets Linux running on it eventually but it doesn't really work very well because it doesn't support any of the specialized hardware.
Then ev