
Linux 5.6 - SomeSnail
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wi9ZT7Stg-uSpX0UWQzam6OP9Jzz6Xu1CkYu1cicpD5OA@mail.gmail.com/
======
ihalip
I'm just a kernel newbie looking at small issues in my free time, but seeing
my name in the shortlog feels very rewarding.

~~~
MrQuincle
Nice, what did you do and how much time did it take? I've been hesitating to
contribute but it would be great to read a blog post of someone just starting
to contribute to see what it takes! It might be enough to get over the fear.

~~~
ihalip
I only did some small fixes for building the kernel with the clang compiler.

Probably the most confusing thing when getting started is finding something to
work on. There's no real centralized issue tracker/TODO list/ideas list -
discussion happens mostly in mailing lists [0][1] for specific topics. If you
follow the discussion on YOUR_FAVORITE_TOPIC long enough you should be able to
find easy work items, people able to help further, reviewers for your changes
etc.

In my case specifically, I found the great people at
[https://clangbuiltlinux.github.io](https://clangbuiltlinux.github.io), which
is how I got started.

[0] [http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html](http://vger.kernel.org/vger-
lists.html) [1]
[https://lore.kernel.org/lists.html](https://lore.kernel.org/lists.html)

~~~
ndesaulniers
Finding where to start was the precise issue I looked to solve by setting up
that issue tracker.

And by being patient, leaving low hanging fruit, taking the time to file
issues (explain, demonstrate, guide, enable), we've been able to help many
people including yourself make their first contributions to Linux and LLVM.

I'm proud of you, Ilie!

~~~
cogman10
Honestly, probably the hardest part of Open source ATM. Contributing to a
project is, frankly, super intimidating. Doubly so when it is something as
important as the Kernel.

~~~
ndesaulniers
I agree. Finding where to start/how to help, and fear of jumping in/criticism
are biggest barriers to open source contribution. Also, time/family
constraints and lack of mentors.

Sink or swim!

------
hannob
If anyone else - like me - has tried updating the kernel this morning and
figured out wifi with an intel card was broken: It seems they broke the
iwlwifi driver [1] and here [2] is the patch to fix it.

[1]
[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5....](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.6-Broken-
Intel-IWLWIFI) [2]
[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net.g...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net.git/commit/?id=be8c827f50a0bcd56361b31ada11dc0a3c2fd240)

~~~
minton
Being worried about the current trajectory of macOS, I’ve been thinking more
and more about Linux and imagining how far it must have come since I last used
it in the early 2000s. Reading things like this really dampen my enthusiasm
for trying Linux again.

~~~
nextos
Glitches like this are very infrequent if you run well chosen hardware. If you
run e.g. an all-Intel setup which is a few months old, it's rare.

If you are afraid of things getting broken, simply use NixOS. All upgrades can
be easily rolled back, and you can freeze updates of some packages, or get
packages through different channels with different stability compromises. I
prefer to get everything through rolling release channels, as then bugs come
one by one.

I've been running Linux on a MacBook Air 11 2012 for years, and everything
worked out of the box from day 1. For the record, that's a pure Intel machine
with the exception of a Broadcom wireless card. Said card works equally bad in
Linux and Mac, I don't get why Apple keeps sticking to this brand.

I was hoping to upgrade to one of the new 2020 Airs, which are again providing
terrific value, a great screen and keyboard. Sadly, the T2 chip makes things a
bit difficult. It's getting support for Linux, but there are still many
glitches. My Mac was broken by some stupid inspector in my rental property,
and it's sadly not so easy to find a decent replacement with all COVID
restrictions.

Another option is the Surface line, which is surprisingly well supported. The
Surface Go, for example, works incredibly well as a tablet. All recent Surface
machines work quite well in Linux.

Else, your best bet is a ThinkPad or an XPS. Unfortunately, Chromebooks are no
longer so easy to reflash.

~~~
sfilargi
> Glitches like this are very infrequent if you run well chosen hardware.

1 point sample here but I never manage to get reliable WiFi on a NUC6i7KYK.
Hardware that should be included in the “well known” category.

~~~
nextos
Sometimes even this fails, what can I say.

Ubuntu runs a certification program. I wish there was an independent party
certifying hardware for Linux. And they looked into all the details, such as
battery discharge triggering ACPI events, 802.11 functions supported by
wireless card and things like that.

~~~
sfilargi
> Sometimes even this fails, what can I say.

Not blaming you :D

------
jasoneckert
I definitely appreciate how Linus mentioned his daughter identified him as a
"social distancing champ" \- many of us developers have been practising social
distancing long before anyone heard of COVID-19 ;-)

~~~
wffurr
Reminds me of this Penny Arcade comic with a similar sentiment about video
game players: [https://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2020/03/25/bells](https://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2020/03/25/bells)

------
est31
Linux 5.6 is getting Wireguard, Linux 5.7 will be getting exfat. It's a great
year for the kernel.

~~~
stingraycharles
What is special about exfat? I see it’s a variant of FAT32 that allows for
more than 4GB, and is mainly for creating USBs? Does this mean it will improve
interop with Windows?

~~~
cosarara
One special thing about exfat is that when it gets corrupted you are screwed.

~~~
bipson
In difference to ... ?

~~~
cosarara
And adding to what guerrilla said, it seems to end up bad more easily than
fat32, at least in my experience. I only have anecdata for this, but old files
appearing as 0 bytes, filesystems that decide they won't mount again, things
that I've only had and seen on other people's systems with exfat.

------
einpoklum
While announcing Linux 5.6 is relevant to HN, the particular mailing list
message regards differences from a previous release candidate.

Can someone please explain, in layperson's terms, what has changed from Linux
5.5 (or 5.4) to 5.6?

~~~
the8472
[https://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges](https://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges)
this wiki page currently covers 5.5 but should be updated to 5.6 in the coming
days.

~~~
viraptor
The version-specific pages are available in draft form before the main one
gets updated:
[https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_5.6](https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_5.6)

------
jklinger410
Feeling a noticeable speed improvement on my Thinkpad running Focal Fossa.
Hearing variable fan sounds that I am not used to running on Linux as well. I
feel like the fan has been much more active when running Ubuntu as opposed to
Windows. Hopefully these new fan sounds hint at less fan usage long-term.

Once Fossa gets out of beta and some of the weird GNOME bugs clear up for that
release, this will probably be the best Linux/Ubuntu performance in years.

------
steelbird
"So we'll play it by ear and see what happens. It's not like the merge window
is more important than your health, or the health of people around you."

Very nice.

------
tracker1
Upgraded to a system with an X570 motherboard and an RX 5700 XT graphics
card... for the most part, since Kernel 5.3, every release has been more
stable and mostly better performing... though having to manually download
drivers a couple times from the kernel git repo has been a pain, I really
appreciate the effort.

\-----

Rant ahead...

If only the front end could button up more... Gnome's blank screen + password
seems to have a bug that I didn't have the time/ability to overcome and
switched to kde/plasma, which imho is really disjointed as an experience in so
many ways. I spent about 4 months mostly in Linux, until a few weeks ago, I
had to switch back to windows.

As to why the switch back, I couldn't use a VM, as most of the stuff didn't
yet support the ahead of LTS kernel I was using, and I needed that for
hardware stability.

I will say the efforts of the Kernel team consistently impress me, and is a
big part of why I target Linux and/or Docker for most of the work that I do.
Docker+WSL2 has been nearly the best of both worlds to me. I still have Linux
on another drive, so will probably give Elementary's UI a try next.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
You should perhaps try other desktop environments/windows managers. The linux
desktop world definitely does not simply end beyond Gnome and KDE. And very
few people seem to be enjoying Gnome much at all, it just seems like a poorly
designed environment.

Nowadays I feel like throwing up at the thought of having to switch back to
Windows, even in terms of desktop environment and interface. There are just so
many more things one can do with Linux, ways to set up everything the way I
want and weird Windows quirks to have to deal with.

Especially the amount of extensibility and combinations are amazing. If I like
a certain program or widget from one desktop environment, the chances are that
I can just run that program while running the other desktop environment, thus
combining the total experience into the one that I want. Not every single
program can be freely combined of course, but many of them.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> And very few people seem to be enjoying Gnome much at all,

Happy people don't comment as often as people who have complaints.

I personally have used GNOME for a decade and a half, and it continues to Just
Work for me, and get better with each release.

I'm not suggesting that nobody has issues with it, but the idea that nobody
likes it is certainly untrue. There's a reason it's the most popular default
environment installed by distributions.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
Not GNOME 3 right? It is the old GNOME that has "just worked", and I was
talking about the new one which everyone hates despite Ubuntu trying to push
people into using it.

~~~
JoshTriplett
(You might consider approaching things with less flames. Also, no, that's not
historically accurate: Ubuntu didn't push GNOME until quite recently; they
pushed their own Unity environment for a long time, and only recently switched
to GNOME to better align with other distributions. And as mentioned in the
comment you're replying to, no, "everyone" doesn't hate GNOME 3. Some people
do. Loudness does not indicate quantity or proportion.)

Yes, I mean GNOME 3, which Just Works for me, far better than GNOME 2 ever
did. Before that, I ran GNOME 2, which was far better than GNOME 1. And before
that I ran GNOME 1.

The parallels between GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 are remarkable: GNOME 2 was also a
major new version, much simpler with less configuration options and more focus
on good out-of-the-box behavior, people hated it at first for daring to change
at all, in addition to legitimate criticisms that they'd removed too much, and
after the first couple of versions they found the right balance and the result
turned out much better.

------
hd4
Does anyone have any idea/info about the status of upcoming copy-on-write
Linux filesystems like bcachefs or btrfs?

------
maallooc
I hope wireguard improves it’s tooling. It feels a bit crude for me.

~~~
Improvotter
You can use networkd to make it easier, if you like using systemd that is.

~~~
maallooc
Care to elaborate?

~~~
arianvanp
You can declaratively manage wireguard using networkd:

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/WireGuard#Using_systemd...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/WireGuard#Using_systemd-
networkd)

------
pyuser583
That’s nice.

