Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#91

Post by stackskipton » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 7:10 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #64

asveikau wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at Microsoft during the Windows 8 cycle. I remember hearing about a kernel feature I found interesting. Then I found linux had it for a few years at the time. I think the reality is that Linux is ahead on a lot of kernel stuff. More experimentation is happening.

I was surprised to hear that Windows just added native NVMe which Linux has had for many years. I wonder if Azure has been paying the SCSI emulation tax this whole time.

Probably, most of stuff you see in Windows Server these days is backported from Azure improvements.

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#92

Post by OsrsNeedsf2P » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 7:11 PM UTC

dfedbeef wrote: post #67

cherryteastain wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't anyone get a RHEL instance on their favorite cloud, dnf install whatever packages they want sources of, email Redhat to demand the sources, and shut down the instance?

RHEL specifically makes it really annoying to see the source. You get a web view.

Honestly just hearing this makes me want to get all their binaries, request the code, scrape it with OCR and upload it somewhere

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#93

Post by torginus » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 7:12 PM UTC

7bit wrote: post #56

asveikau wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at Microsoft during the Windows 8 cycle. I remember hearing about a kernel feature I found interesting. Then I found linux had it for a few years at the time. I think the reality is that Linux is ahead on a lot of kernel stuff. More experimentation is happening.

And behind on a lot of stuff. The Microsoft's ACLs are nothing short of one of the best designed permission systems there are. On the surface, they are as simple as Linux UOG/rwx stuff if you want it to be, but you can really, REALLY dive into the technology and apply super specific permissions.

And they work on everything. You can have a mutex, a window handle or a process protected by ACL.

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#94

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 7:12 PM UTC

TZubiri wrote: post #20

hoppyhoppy2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generated comments are not allowed on HN.

I feel the intent of these rules are to forbid undisclosed aigen comments. If you ban disclosed usage of AIgen, you will get covert usage of AIgen

[deleted]

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#95

Post by delusional » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

Fiveplus wrote: post #17

Valve is practically singlehandedly dragging the Linux ecosystem forward in areas that nobody else wanted to touch. They needed Windows games to run on Linux so we got massive Proton/Wine advancements. They needed better display output for the deck and we got HDR and VRR support in wayland. They also needed smoother frame pacing and we got a scheduler that Zuck is now using to run data centers. Its funny to think tha…

> Valve is practically singlehandedly dragging the Linux ecosystem forward in areas that nobody else wanted to touch.

I'm loving what valve has been doing, and their willingness to shove money into projects that have long been under invested in, BUT. Please don't forget all the volunteers that have developed these systems for years before valve decided to step up. All of this is only possible because a ton of different people spent decades slowly building a project, that for most of it's lifetime seemed like a dead end idea.

Wine as a software package is nothing short of miraculous. It has been monumentally expensive to build, but is provided to everyone to freely use as they wish.

Nobody, and I do mean NOBODY would have funded a project that spent 20 years struggling to run office and photoshop. Valve took it across the finish line into commercially useful project, but they could not have done that without the decade+ of work before that.

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#96

Post by packetlost » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

MarleTangible wrote: post #26

Fiveplus wrote: post #17

Valve is practically singlehandedly dragging the Linux ecosystem forward in areas that nobody else wanted to touch. They needed Windows games to run on Linux so we got massive Proton/Wine advancements. They needed better display output for the deck and we got HDR and VRR support in wayland. They also needed smoother frame pacing and we got a scheduler that Zuck is now using to run data centers. Its funny to think tha…

Over time they're going to touch things that people were waiting for Microsoft to do for years. I don't have an example in mind at the moment, but it's a lot better to make the changes yourself than wait for OS or console manufacturer to take action.

Kernel level anti-cheat with trusted execution / signed kernels is probably a reasonable new frontier for online games, but it requires a certain level of adoption from game makers.

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#97

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 7:16 PM UTC

pbh101 wrote: post #71

pmontra wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep and hibernate don't just work on Windows unless Microsoft work with laptop and boards manufacturers to make Windows play nice with all those drivers. It's inevitable that it's hit and miss on any other OS that manufacturers don't care much about. Apple does nearly everything inside their walls, that's why it just works.

Regardless of how it must be implemented, if this is a desirable feature then this explanation isn’t an absolution of Linux but rather an indictment: its development model cannot consistently provide this product feature. (And same for Windows to the degree it is more inconsistent on Windows than Mac)

> Regardless of how it must be implemented, if this is a desirable feature then this explanation isn’t an absolution of Linux but rather an indictment: its development model cannot consistently provide this product feature.

The problem is: the specifications of ACPI are complex, Windows' behavior tends to be pretty much trash and most hardware tends to be trash too (AMD GPUs for example were infamous for not being resettable for years [1]), which means that BIOSes have to work around quirks on both the hardware and software. Usually, as soon as it is reasonably working with Windows (for a varying definition of "reasonably", that is), the ACPI code is shipped and that's it.

Unfortunately, Linux follows standards (or at least, it tries to) and cannot fully emulate the numerous Windows quirks... and on top of that, GPUs tend to be hot piles of dung requiring proprietary blobs that make life even worse.

[1] https://www.nicksherlock.com/2020/11/working-around-the-amd-...

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#98

Post by mstank » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 7:16 PM UTC

MarleTangible wrote: post #26

Fiveplus wrote: post #17

Valve is practically singlehandedly dragging the Linux ecosystem forward in areas that nobody else wanted to touch. They needed Windows games to run on Linux so we got massive Proton/Wine advancements. They needed better display output for the deck and we got HDR and VRR support in wayland. They also needed smoother frame pacing and we got a scheduler that Zuck is now using to run data centers. Its funny to think tha…

Over time they're going to touch things that people were waiting for Microsoft to do for years. I don't have an example in mind at the moment, but it's a lot better to make the changes yourself than wait for OS or console manufacturer to take action.

Valve... please do Github Actions next

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#99

Post by baq » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 7:17 PM UTC

Fiveplus wrote: post #17

Valve is practically singlehandedly dragging the Linux ecosystem forward in areas that nobody else wanted to touch. They needed Windows games to run on Linux so we got massive Proton/Wine advancements. They needed better display output for the deck and we got HDR and VRR support in wayland. They also needed smoother frame pacing and we got a scheduler that Zuck is now using to run data centers. Its funny to think tha…

I low key hope the current DDR5 prices push them to drag the Linux memory and swap management into the 21st century, too, because hard locking on low memory got old a while ago

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#100

Post by dabockster » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 7:17 PM UTC

7bit wrote: post #56

asveikau wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at Microsoft during the Windows 8 cycle. I remember hearing about a kernel feature I found interesting. Then I found linux had it for a few years at the time. I think the reality is that Linux is ahead on a lot of kernel stuff. More experimentation is happening.

And behind on a lot of stuff. The Microsoft's ACLs are nothing short of one of the best designed permission systems there are. On the surface, they are as simple as Linux UOG/rwx stuff if you want it to be, but you can really, REALLY dive into the technology and apply super specific permissions.

Oh yeah for sure. Linux is amazing in a computer science sense, but it still can't beat Windows' vertically integrated registry/GPO based permissions system. Group/Local Policy especially, since it's effectively a zero coding required system.

Ubuntu just recently got a way to automate its installer (recently being during covid). I think you can do the same on RHEL too. But that's largely it on Linux right now. If you need to admin 10,000+ computers, Windows is still the king.