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Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

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Re: Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

#11

Post by techjamie »

mschuster91 wrote: post #9

> If your Linux laptop doubles as a music player, another nice new feature is that you can now stream your audio over USB even while the rest of your system is asleep. That capability's been available in Android for a while, but now it's part of mainline Linux. I thought Android did that by just turning off all but one CPU core and suspend all processes not required for streaming + bluetooth? I really can't imagine h…

Since sleep suspends execution and keeps the RAM state, I suppose it isn't a huge stretch for the kernel to provide some mechanism by which a program can stay awake while execution of others is paused.

I'm sure there are aspects that are hard to reason about which I'm simply unaware of, but the idea makes sense to me.

Re: Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

#12

Post by smashed »

arp242 wrote: post #7

> If your Linux laptop doubles as a music player, another nice new feature is that you can now stream your audio over USB even while the rest of your system is asleep. That capability's been available in Android for a while, but now it's part of mainline Linux. How does that work? You still need some program to actually play the music (mpv, Sotify, whatnot)? Or what am I misunderstanding? Unfortunately there are no d…

It's probably related to this:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-QCOM-USB-Audio-OLOA...

Audio usb offloading. Only supported on Qualcomm soc's.

Article is misleading. Audio offloading is probably only useful to avoid waking the main CPU too often, so better battery management... CPU can remain sleeping a few microseconds longer, not all the time.

Not something many will benefit.

Re: Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

#13

Post by preisschild »

Alupis wrote: post #5
tombert wrote: post #2

I'm still kind of surprised that Linus ended up allowing Rust into the kernel. Good, but surprising. Looking forward to this release once it hits NixOS Unstable.

My understanding is its contained to the "edges", mostly in drivers and not in the "core" kernel. Still interesting indeed.

for now, due to gcc-rs not being completed yet and the rustc compiler not supporting every linux architecture

Re: Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

#14

Post by ndriscoll »

arp242 wrote: post #7

> If your Linux laptop doubles as a music player, another nice new feature is that you can now stream your audio over USB even while the rest of your system is asleep. That capability's been available in Android for a while, but now it's part of mainline Linux. How does that work? You still need some program to actually play the music (mpv, Sotify, whatnot)? Or what am I misunderstanding? Unfortunately there are no d…

A 20 MB 3.5 minute .flac file takes ~200 ms to decode into a 35 MB .wav on my desktop, so in principle the program could spend a small fraction of a second placing the decoded audio into a small buffer and give a pointer to hardware to keep playing it while the rest of the system goes to sleep for a few minutes. Or if the hardware has direct support for the codec, it could just give it the file as-is.

Re: Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

#15

Post by lights0123 »

Alupis wrote: post #5
tombert wrote: post #2

I'm still kind of surprised that Linus ended up allowing Rust into the kernel. Good, but surprising. Looking forward to this release once it hits NixOS Unstable.

My understanding is its contained to the "edges", mostly in drivers and not in the "core" kernel. Still interesting indeed.

It surprised me that Linux 6.12's QR code generator is written in Rust and enabled in at least Arch and Fedora.

Re: Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

#16

Post by dralley »

tombert wrote: post #2

I'm still kind of surprised that Linus ended up allowing Rust into the kernel. Good, but surprising. Looking forward to this release once it hits NixOS Unstable.

Linus is pragmatic. His only hard rule is "don't break userspace", most everything else is contingent.

From what I can tell, he views Rust for Linux as a social project as much as a technical one - attract new (and younger) developers into the kernel, which has become pretty "senior", force all of the "unwritten rules" to be written down, and break down some of the knowledge siloing and fiefdom behavior that has taken place over the years (by sharing it specifically with that younger group of developers).

If you think about it, Rust for Linux is in some ways essentially an auditing committee reviewing all of the API interactions between kernel subsystems and forcing them to be properly defined and documented. Even if the Rust part were to fail (exceedingly unlikely at this point), it's a useful endeavour in those other respects.

But of course, if Rust is successful at encoding all of those rules using the type system, that unlocks a lot of value in the kernel too. Most of the kernel code is in drivers, and it's typically written by less experienced kernel developers while being harder to review by maintainers that don't have background on or access to the hardware. So if you can get drivers written in Rust with APIs that are harder to misuse, that takes a big load off the maintainers.

Re: Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

#17

Post by tombert »

dralley wrote: post #16
tombert wrote: post #2

I'm still kind of surprised that Linus ended up allowing Rust into the kernel. Good, but surprising. Looking forward to this release once it hits NixOS Unstable.

Linus is pragmatic. His only hard rule is "don't break userspace", most everything else is contingent. From what I can tell, he views Rust for Linux as a social project as much as a technical one - attract new (and younger) developers into the kernel, which has become pretty "senior", force all of the "unwritten rules" to be written down, and break down some of the knowledge siloing and fiefdom behavior that has take…

I just remember how much shit he talked about C++, and I guess I assumed that that would carry over to Rust as well.

Re: Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

#18

Post by jeffbee »

lights0123 wrote: post #15
Alupis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is its contained to the "edges", mostly in drivers and not in the "core" kernel. Still interesting indeed.

It surprised me that Linux 6.12's QR code generator is written in Rust and enabled in at least Arch and Fedora.

Why does the kernel need a QR code generator?

Re: Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

#19

Post by kstrauser »

tombert wrote: post #17
dralley wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus is pragmatic. His only hard rule is "don't break userspace", most everything else is contingent. From what I can tell, he views Rust for Linux as a social project as much as a technical one - attract new (and younger) developers into the kernel, which has become pretty "senior", force all of the "unwritten rules" to be written down, and break down some of the knowledge siloing and fiefdom behavior that has take…

I just remember how much shit he talked about C++, and I guess I assumed that that would carry over to Rust as well.

True, but the Rust language itself is tiny compared to C++. There are only a slim fraction of the edge cases to learn.

Note that I'm not saying Rust is easy to learn. I found it to be so, but it's going to be different for everyone. I do firmly believe that it's far easier for the average dev to learn the core of Rust than the core of C++, with far fewer footguns along that path.

Re: Linux 6.16: faster file systems, improved confidential memory, more Rust support

#20

Post by tombert »

kstrauser wrote: post #19
tombert wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just remember how much shit he talked about C++, and I guess I assumed that that would carry over to Rust as well.

True, but the Rust language itself is tiny compared to C++. There are only a slim fraction of the edge cases to learn. Note that I'm not saying Rust is easy to learn. I found it to be so, but it's going to be different for everyone. I do firmly believe that it's far easier for the average dev to learn the core of Rust than the core of C++, with far fewer footguns along that path.

Oh I don't disagree with any of that, I like Rust. I was just surprised is all.
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