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Linux 3.4 kernel released

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Re: Linux 3.4 kernel released

#21

Post by meastham »

damncabbage wrote: post #17

I'm confused. Is 3.x meant for a different class of system, or are distros like Ubuntu intentionally lagging behind in 2.6.x land?

The jump to 3.x was a more or less arbitrary decision made by Linus because the 2.6 version numbers were getting very large. Switching to 3.x should basically be the same as any other kernel upgrade, possibly with some additional issues with software that assumes things about the form of the kernel version number. There shouldn't be any distros holding back from upgrading; in fact Ubuntu 12.04 uses a 3.2 kernel.

Re: Linux 3.4 kernel released

#24

Post by 6ren »

christianbryant wrote: post #5

What I thought was more interesting (Linus noted "Nothing really exciting happened since -rc7...") was the exchange between Linus and Peter Zijlstra, in particular this Linus eruption: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/5/19/97

  > And I *do* know that the real world simply isn't simple enough that we could
  > ever do a perfect job, so don't even try - instead aim for "understandable,
  > maintainable, and gets the main issues roughly right".
It's striking that his manner is blunt and over-general... and his technical content is also blunt and over-general. He's known for his pragmatic and effective engineering decisions.

Re: Linux 3.4 kernel released

#25

Post by zokier »

antimora wrote: post #13

Is it me or Linux kernel releases becoming more frequent?

It is you. Since 2005 (early days of 2.6), there has been four to five major releases per year. 3.4 is the second release for this year, so it seems to continue the trend almost perfectly.

Re: Linux 3.4 kernel released

#26

Post by more_original »

andrewvc wrote: post #3

The X32 ABI is interesting. Who'd have thought this many years after 64 bit becoming mainstream, (and decades after it becoming mainstream on servers) something like this would be needed.

Is the X32 ABI meant so that one can run X32 programs on an x64 kernel as well, or does one have to decide to use X32 once and for all and then compile everything with this ABI?

Re: Linux 3.4 kernel released

#27

Post by pmjordan »

more_original wrote: post #26
andrewvc wrote: post #3

The X32 ABI is interesting. Who'd have thought this many years after 64 bit becoming mainstream, (and decades after it becoming mainstream on servers) something like this would be needed.

Is the X32 ABI meant so that one can run X32 programs on an x64 kernel as well, or does one have to decide to use X32 once and for all and then compile everything with this ABI?

My understanding is that the X32 ABI exists only in x86-64 kernels, and requires relevant X32 userspace libraries.

Basically you can choose if you want your program to have only 4 GB address space and thus only consume 4 bytes of memory per pointer. This is a per-process choice. (but obviously requires special binaries)

Re: Linux 3.4 kernel released

#28

Post by Someone »

seats wrote: post #7
slug wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone has a good argument why NOT to use this for every non memory intensive application? I always thought that using 64bit pointers was a waste of memory when not needed and this x32 abi to me seems fantastic since it keeps the several advantages of newer 64bit cpus (more registers for example as mentioned in the article).

If an application is not memory intensive, why would you care if there is 'waste'? Personally I wish everyone would just move to 64 bit all the time.

Ten not memory intensive applications, combined, can easily be memory intensive.

Re: Linux 3.4 kernel released

#29

Post by ibotty »

slug wrote: post #6
andrewvc wrote: post #3

The X32 ABI is interesting. Who'd have thought this many years after 64 bit becoming mainstream, (and decades after it becoming mainstream on servers) something like this would be needed.

Anyone has a good argument why NOT to use this for every non memory intensive application? I always thought that using 64bit pointers was a waste of memory when not needed and this x32 abi to me seems fantastic since it keeps the several advantages of newer 64bit cpus (more registers for example as mentioned in the article).

address space randomization

(i can dig out a post of (afair) solar designer that goes into more detail, but i think this should be clear as is)

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