
Linux 3.14 out - arunc
http://lwn.net/Articles/592543/
======
quink
Not updated yet, but here it goes:
[http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.14](http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.14),
with the caveat that:

> /!\ /!\ /!\ WARNING /!\ /!\ /!\ : This page is not complete and it's missing
> lots of critical information.

Also: [https://lwn.net/Articles/581657/](https://lwn.net/Articles/581657/),
[https://lwn.net/Articles/582352/](https://lwn.net/Articles/582352/),
[https://lwn.net/Articles/583681/](https://lwn.net/Articles/583681/),
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTYzNDg](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTYzNDg)
and
[http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/21sxiw/linux_314_rele...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/21sxiw/linux_314_released/).

π

~~~
atweiden
[http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.14#head-72b295b09fea85de2e8...](http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.14#head-72b295b09fea85de2e80f0b7850048264fed887e)

zram swap has really sped up my workstation laptop, so I'm pleased to see it
in 3.14. I've been running zram in place of a swap partition for about three
weeks now. I notice Vim opens faster, as do Chromium bookmarks.

Right now I'm having to use an unofficially supported shell script to get
zramswap [1]. Hoping official support is on the way.

1:
[https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/zramswap](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/zramswap)

------
lambda
Hey, the first kernel release with a patch from me in it! It's just a typo fix
in a comment, but hey, it's a start.

~~~
contergan
At least you can put "Linux Kernel Contributor" on your CV now.

~~~
vanderZwan
Ah, you've seen that comic come by on reddit too, eh?

[http://i.imgur.com/6KQCx89.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/6KQCx89.jpg)

------
nemasu
Excellent! My code will now finally work as intended! I used: `uname -r` * r *
r and 2 * `uname -r` * r .

~~~
jey
`tex --version` may be a better choice.

~~~
hf
This should've been in my never-ending history:

    
    
      $ tex -v | head -n1 | awk '{print $2}'
      3.1415926
    

but it wasn't (I distinctly remember using this line to prove a point a few
months ago).

------
newman314
I wonder if this means that 3.14 will make it into Ubuntu 14.04. Would be nice
not to have a franken-kernel for a LTS release.

~~~
uulbiy
I would assume that 3.12 would be used instead since it's the latest long-term
stable release of the kernel.

~~~
dvirsky
FWIW I'm already using 14.04 beta2, and the kernel there is 3.13.0-20. This
means the stable version will be 3.14, doesn't it?

~~~
pantalaimon
Why would you conclude that?

~~~
dvirsky
I remembered odd versions were unstable, but looking at the kernel info, 3.13
is a stable version. So I'm guessing they'll stick with that.

~~~
pantalaimon
> I remembered odd versions were unstable

this stopped being true very long ago (with the beginning of the 2.6 series)

~~~
dvirsky
TIL :)

------
krakensden
The first change:

> make prepend_name() work correctly when called with negative *buflen

Reminds me a lot of a different article in this week's LWN:
[http://lwn.net/Articles/591959/](http://lwn.net/Articles/591959/)

which I would describe as exceedingly disconcerting. An excerpt:

> So areas like huge pages, page migration, and the mbind() system call have
> been fertile ground. In the case of mbind(), it turned out that all callers
> were going through a user-space library. That library did argument checking,
> so, naturally, the system call itself did not.

------
_mikz
Finally good kernel for docker with AUFS.

~~~
hf
Also, we're possibly one step nearer to Plan9's portable /bin concept (where
each user overlays her binaries with those provided by the system).

~~~
616c
So I tried looking around for info on this but my Google-fo is kind of weak.
If you are still following these comments can you expound on this? It sounds
very, very interesting.

~~~
twoodfin
Try this to start:

[http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/names.html](http://plan9.bell-
labs.com/sys/doc/names.html)

------
jmnicolas
Is it me or they accelerated the pace of Linux kernel releases ?

~~~
Sammi
It's because our silly little brains think there is a bigger difference
between 3.12 and 3.14 than between 2.6.30 and 2.6.32.

When really the prefixes 2.6 and 3 are equivalent in meaning, and the real
difference between 12 and 14 and 30 and 32 is also exactly the same.

Human brains seem to be evolved to think about numbers in a logarithmic
fashion. We stop to think for a long while to debate whether to spend 50 or 75
bucks on a piece of clothing, while we can't perceive the difference between
spending 50,000 or 50,025 thousand on a car. The difference would have to be
50,000 to 75,000 thousand for us to perceive it equally.

~~~
Flimm
> We stop to think for a long while to debate whether to spend 50 or 75 bucks
> on a piece of clothing, while we can't perceive the difference between
> spending 50,000 or 50,025 thousand on a car. The difference would have to be
> 50,000 to 75,000 thousand for us to perceive it equally.

A bit off-topic, but I've read about this irrational thought pattern before,
and it strikes me that it's not that irrational. In general, one buys a car
far less frequently than one buys a piece of clothing, so saving 25 bucks
every time one buys a piece of clothing is going to add up to a lot more than
saving 25 bucks every time one buys a car. The expense of a purchase
correlates with how rare that type of purchase is, so it seems sensible to me.

------
lucb1e
I always like Linux kernel names, but can't find this one. Does it have a
name?

~~~
Spittie
Shuffling Zombie Juror
([http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.g...](http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=38dbfb59d1175ef458d006556061adeaa8751b72))

From the RC1 announcement
([http://lwn.net/Articles/583929/](http://lwn.net/Articles/583929/)):

    
    
      I realize that as a number, 3.14 looks familiar to people, and I had
      naming requests related to that. But that's simply not how the
      nonsense kernel names work. You can console yourself with the fact
      that the name doesn't actually show up anywhere, and nobody really
      cares. So any pi-related name you make up will be *quite* as relevant
      as the one in the main Makefile, so don't get depressed.
    
      Besides, any self-respecting geek will know pi to twenty decimal
      places from their dorky youth, so 3.14 isn't really *that* close, is
      it?

~~~
Aardwolf
Aww, it could at least have been named "Shuffling Zombie Pie"!

------
LeoNatan25
A round of congratulations pies around!

------
peterkelly
Does this mean that all future Linux releases will have version numbers
converging towards Pi, like TeX?

~~~
kintamanimatt
No, the next one will be 3.15!

------
sgt
Did this reach HN's front page due to it being "Linux π", or is there some
particular significance to this realease?

~~~
josteink
3.14 = pi which is always a special number. Who knows.

Besides Linux powers almost everything on the internet, (almost) all of the
world's smartphones and tablets, routers, NASes, millions and millions of
embedded devices, not to mention desktops, Chromebooks, clouds and developer
machines.

If you raise your focus up past your hipster Macbook and decaffed latte, even
a small Linux release is a pretty big thing.

~~~
microtherion
> (almost) all of the world's smartphones and tablets

Almost none of which will ever run this particular Linux kernel release.

Given the regularity of the kernel release schedule, it seems to me that a
release would have to include something particularly interesting (not just
support for yet another processor and yet another file system) in order to
qualify as newsworthy on a general interest news site like this one.

~~~
JamesMcMinn
If you think that Hacker news is a "general interest news" site then you
clearly have no idea what the general public is actually interested in.

