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Linux 4.9 is out

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41–50 of 52 posts

Re: Linux 4.9 is out

#42
post #41

I remember reading about bufferbloat related patches in 4.9 that would make network quite a lot more efficient. Curious to see in practice.

BBR congestion control is amazing. You can read about it here: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3022184

The team made a talk recently, I'll url it when I get back.

Re: Linux 4.9 is out

#44

Why are Linux changelogs so unbelievably shitty? I read it and I have no idea what changed. But, hey, at least I know who fucking changed it, right?

Linus provided a TL;DR: A bit over two thirds drivers (staging, GPU and networking are the bulk of it, but it's all over), with the rest looking fairly normal too: arch updates, documentation, generic networking, filesystems..

Re: Linux 4.9 is out

#45
post #36
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so when the AMD patch was refused, it was refused for this LTS version of the kernel? that's gotta be a huge blow against AMD, no?

The merge window for 4.9 closed long before this recent spate of publicity. The AMDGPU patch would have been on track for more like 4.11.

ah ok, thanks for the information.

Re: Linux 4.9 is out

#46

The Kernel Newbies LinuxChanges page hasn't been updated yet, but when it is, it'll be at https://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges .

Should I be worried about Kernel Newbies? The forum is overrun by spam and it looks like the wiki wasn't updated for 4.8.

There's a changelog for 4.8 under this URL: https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.8

Not sure why it wasn't copied to the wiki, maybe because of

> Warning: /!\ /!\ The changelog is not complete. It will be available during the next week.

Re: Linux 4.9 is out

#47
post #3
post #2

The amount of times the word "updates" appears in the commits makes me feel much better at my difficulty of choosing succinct and unique commit messages.

Note that those aren't "change commits", but merge commits aggregating large swathes of other changes. And it's not even all merge commits, it's just the merges from Linus' "top lieutenants". But I sympathize. I often spend more time on commit messages than the actual changes...

Writing long commit messages (especially for internal/private projects) often gives me a slightly forlorn feeling, knowing that these words will almost certainly never be read again by another person, and possibly even I might never see them again. I persist only because when they do get read, they can be absolutely invaluable in explaining what on earth I was thinking at the time.

Re: Linux 4.9 is out

#48
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that those aren't "change commits", but merge commits aggregating large swathes of other changes. And it's not even all merge commits, it's just the merges from Linus' "top lieutenants". But I sympathize. I often spend more time on commit messages than the actual changes...

Writing long commit messages (especially for internal/private projects) often gives me a slightly forlorn feeling, knowing that these words will almost certainly never be read again by another person, and possibly even I might never see them again. I persist only because when they do get read, they can be absolutely invaluable in explaining what on earth I was thinking at the time.

I persist only because when they do get read, they can be absolutely invaluable in explaining what on earth I was thinking at the time.

I wish I could upvote this more than once.

Re: Linux 4.9 is out

#49

Why are Linux changelogs so unbelievably shitty? I read it and I have no idea what changed. But, hey, at least I know who fucking changed it, right?

The problem, as I understand it, is that these are summaries of summaries. The actual commit messages are incredibly detailed, then they get rolled up by the lieutenants into a single merge with one line per change, then Linus merges them in and adds to the final summary 'networking updates'. If you want to know what actually changed, then look at the commit logs, e.g.:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/compare/v4.9-rc8...v4.9

Re: Linux 4.9 is out

#50

I remember reading about bufferbloat related patches in 4.9 that would make network quite a lot more efficient. Curious to see in practice.

Yes, the BBR developments seem to help TCP connections a lot.

There is also a lot of good research going on in the "Make Wi-Fi Fast" project. See https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/make-wifi-fast/wiki/

For concrete results, see June 2016 paper: "Fixing the WiFi Performance Anomaly" at https://blog.tohojo.dk/2016/06/fixing-the-wifi-performance-a...

Read the archives of the "Make-wifi-fast" mailing list at: https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/make-wifi-fast

If you want to use bleeding edge LEDE code (spinoff of OpenWrt) to see if your Wi-Fi is faster than mine, try: https://kau.toke.dk/lede/airtime-fairness-builds/ar71xx/gene...

Get your lag down to milliseconds no matter how you load your network.

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