Linux 4.12 Released

https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/7/2/164

by slyzmud • 9 years ago

208 74 9 years ago

sp332• 9 years ago

This is a bit... opaque. Here is a lot of more-readable information about what's in the release, and some links to more editorial content. https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.12

sctb• 9 years ago

Thanks, we've updated the link from https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin... to the official release announcement.

ganeshkrishnan• 9 years ago

If you use ubuntu, install the kernel from here: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.12/

hobozilla• 9 years ago

Thank you, exactly what I needed.

blfr• 9 years ago

I have always been tempted. Is there any reason not to?

Insanity• 9 years ago

I wonder this as well. Might a kernel update not break some applications or make the system less stable?

old-gregg• 9 years ago

Not Ubuntu, but Debian: have been running Debian stable with unstable kernels for a while. Never saw any issues. Application packages generally do not have hard dependencies on specific kernel versions but, as always, YMMV.

chrisper• 9 years ago

Well, sometimes there could be a bug lingering around. But that could be the case with any software. Probably just keep the old kernel around as well. Just in Case.

valarauca1• 9 years ago

No, you generally should.

Those Linus tirades about We Dont Break Userland are why. The only way application interact with the kernel is via SystemCalls, which once they go public are -never- retracted, and never significantly change.

This is why the kernel has system calls like 'mlock' and 'mlock2', because the first call ended up being incorrect but YOU CANT TURN BACK NOW! Or a better example `stat`, `stat64`, and `statx`

dotancohen2• 9 years ago

I have always been tempted. Is there any reason not to?

There is a small chance that something will break, which is usually either the wifi or graphics drivers on desktop systems.

Now let me ask you, is there any _reason_ for you to upgrade? Another poster mentions better laptop battery life but it could easily go the other way on some systems. Are you having trouble with any hardware? Unsupported webcam, etc? If not, then you're encouraged to upgrade the kernel as a learning experience but if your priority is stability and you don't have an evening to risk investing, then you should probably wait for Ubuntu to provide the update.

pizza234• 9 years ago

In real world, it may give you zero tanglible improvements (only virtual ones), against a variable amount of maintenance overhead.

Aside the obvious manual download and installation, if you use ZFS and Ubuntu LTS for example, it's messy, because the shipped ZFS version won't support the most recent kernel, so you'll have to separately download the ZFS packages from the most recent Ubuntu. This is just an edge case of course.

Also, distributions like Ubuntu LTS now provide stable kernel upgrades, so that you're not significantly far from the latest versions (16.04.3 will ship shortly, and will likely have 4.10 or more recent).

Ultimately, it really depends on your machine. If you have recent hardware (eg. Skylake), then definitely new versions will bring compatibility (along with updated `linux-firmware` package).

I've been using mainline versions for the last years, due to recent hardware, and didn't have any problems (aside the ZFS issue, which made me move to BTRFS).

gigatexal3• 9 years ago

sudo apt add-repo'able? thanks for pointing this out

_arvin3• 9 years ago

you can download "ubuntu kernel update utility" (ukuu) for an easier way to install and remove kernels, but you likely won't find a PPA that'll deliver you point releases as they come for the latest mainline

_arvin3• 9 years ago

for anyone needing further instructions, you'll want the generic .deb files for your architecture (not low-latency unless you know what that is):

linux-headers-4.12.0-041200_4.12.0-041200.201707022031_all.deb

linux-headers-4.12.0-041200-generic_4.12.0-041200.201707022031_amd64.deb

linux-image-4.12.0-041200-generic_4.12.0-041200.201707022031_amd64.deb

then just $ sudo dpkg -i *.deb in the folder containing the files, and then a reboot, and $ uname -a to verify you're on the correct kernel

sdca• 9 years ago

This lacks linux-tools and thus breaks cpu frequency and cpu governor management tools (cpupower, TLP, etc).

For reasons unknown Fedora's RawhideKernelNodebug repo includes that package but Ubuntu's doesn't :)

jhoechtl• 9 years ago

And don't forget about the updated firmware drivers

https://packages.ubuntu.com/artful/all/linux-firmware/downlo...

When going latest kernel it makes sense to have the latest firmware otherwise certain kernel features wont work.

alien_• 9 years ago

Shameless plug: I wrote a small tool which allows users to update the kernel to the latest version or rc build, since this is not really a ppa exposed as apt repository:

https://github.com/cristim/kernel-update

mariocesar• 9 years ago

Could someone say something about the new "BFQ I/O scheduler"? I was not aware of the work being done, and the goal to have a more reponsive desktop

zackelan• 9 years ago

http://algo.ing.unimo.it/people/paolo/disk_sched/

https://lwn.net/Articles/601799/

tl;dr:

CFQ separates each process's I/O requests into a separate queue, then rotates through the queues trying to divide the available bandwidth as fairly as it can.
The BFQ I/O scheduler also maintains per-process queues of I/O requests, but it does away with the round-robin approach used by CFQ. Instead, it assigns an "I/O budget" to each process.

ausjke• 9 years ago

CFQ is best for mechanical hard drives not sure if it is updated for SSDs, deadline and noop seem better for SSD

shmerl2• 9 years ago

Unfortunately, proper AMD Vega support didn't make it in.

vanderZwan• 9 years ago

In the diff department, 4.12 is also very big, although the reason there isn't just that there's a lot of development, we have the added bulk of a lot of new header files for the AMD Vega support

Not the one downvoting you but: are you sure?

benchaney• 9 years ago

I believe that is just header files. Actual support comes after.

shmerl2• 9 years ago

Only headless support did. So if you want to play games - no dice. That's why I said proper above.

avar• 9 years ago

Linus says it's a large release, here's a numeric breakdown of recent kernel releases, showing number of commits, diff | wc, and a diffstat with/without the drivers/ directory:

    v4.7..v4.8:
        14552
        1331854 5068427 42175318
        11363 files changed, 627754 insertions(+), 279373 deletions(-)
        6657 files changed, 329595 insertions(+), 167605 deletions(-)
    v4.8..v4.9:
        17392
        1419476 5372905 44206994
        11179 files changed, 632159 insertions(+), 354871 deletions(-)
        5993 files changed, 214842 insertions(+), 120945 deletions(-)
    v4.9..v4.10:
        14249
        1463146 5668517 49833479
        11726 files changed, 744012 insertions(+), 249810 deletions(-)
        5884 files changed, 329130 insertions(+), 115189 deletions(-)
    v4.10..v4.11:
        13891
        1227388 4763853 39671475
        12506 files changed, 530154 insertions(+), 232410 deletions(-)
        6230 files changed, 209555 insertions(+), 95502 deletions(-)
    v4.11..v4.12:
        15736
        2025692 7383431 88754335
        12396 files changed, 1300537 insertions(+), 267064 deletions(-)
        5829 files changed, 215764 insertions(+), 124745 deletions(-)

Via:

    parallel -k 'r=v4.$(({}-1))..v4.{} ; echo $r: ; (git rev-list $r | wc -l; git -c diff.renameLimit=10240 diff $r | wc; git -c diff.renameLimit=10240 diff --shortstat $r ; git -c diff.renameLimit=10240 diff --shortstat $r -- ":!drivers/") | sed -r "s/^ *//; s/^/    /"' ::: {8..12}

microcolonel• 9 years ago

That is to say, a net addition of over a million lines in one release.

joecool1029• 9 years ago

I think atomic mode-setting for the intel DRM driver being default now is the most interesting feature for my configurations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager#Atomi...

KenoFischer2• 9 years ago

Breaks rr I believe :(. In fact there were two regressions of that sort introduced this release cycles. One was caught early enough to get fixed, I guess the other wasn't.

616c• 9 years ago

Where can I read of the details of that. RR has always seemed like magic to me as a non-systems programming amateur.

KenoFischer2• 9 years ago

Mailing List threads:

http://marc.info/?t=149861183900003&r=1&w=2 http://marc.info/?t=149864742900002&r=1&w=2

Oh and the one that got fixed:

http://marc.info/?t=149609949000002&r=1&w=2

jug2• 9 years ago

Yay! I think this is the one that means unusually much to me, as the nouveau NVIDIA GTX 970 fix is part of it. Pretty much all popular Linux distros "fails" (black screen on boot unless the nomodeset boot option is used) on this fairly common graphics card, until proprietary drivers are installed.

Apparently 4.12 fixes a VRAM detection issue. I guess regarding the shenanigans by NVIDIA where they put 3.5 GB on this gfx card, and then 0.5 GB more in a slower variant (that I supposed is presented differently to the kernel). They went into a lot of trouble and bad PR for that so I think it's safe to say they won't do it again anytime soon.

Here's the bug thread: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89664

gonzerelli• 9 years ago

I had to disable my GPUs and use Intel so I could get inside and manually install NVIDIA driver. I don't have much experience with setting boot options. Shouldn't have to take 2 years to fix, though, but I guess it was a weird card.

Linux 4.12 Released

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