
Linux 4.12 Released - slyzmud
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/7/2/164
======
avar
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
That is to say, a net addition of over a million lines in one release.

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

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

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

~~~
dom0
Linus Torvalds breaks into a childish tantrum of (edit: correction: swearing
rants are technically coherent), public swearing at people whenever anyone
anywhere in Linux kernel development breaks any userspace app. As a
consequence, userspace regressions are rare.

(Might contain traces of hyperbole—still; Linus' behaviour is largely
unacceptable nonetheless)

~~~
wtallis
Linus is very well known for his rants, but you've definitely mischaracterized
them. He's seldom incoherent, and the ones that are vulgar enough to make for
juicy sensationalized "news" are only ever directed at contributors who are
experienced enough to know better than to break userspace or something badly
wrong like that. His more level-headed corrections of well-meaning
inexperienced developers don't make the news.

~~~
dom0
"only ever directed at contributors who are experienced enough". That's not
strictly true, see e.g. [https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-
devel/2017-Februa...](https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-
devel/2017-February/133837.html)

~~~
saghm
Props to Daniel for defending the contributor, as I'm guessing they wouldn't
feel comfortable arguing back with Linus.

~~~
icebraining
To me it reads like redirecting blame to the contributor by appearing to
"defend" him. Linus was obviously replying (and chastising) the person who
sent him the code, and who was supposed to review it beforehand, not the
original author.

~~~
dullgiulio
[https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-
devel/2017-Februa...](https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-
devel/2017-February/133794.html)

Yep, that's right: "I'm upset, because I expect better quality control. In
fact, I expect _some_ qualitty[sic] control."

------
jug
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](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89664)

~~~
gonzerelli
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.

------
mariocesar
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
[http://algo.ing.unimo.it/people/paolo/disk_sched/](http://algo.ing.unimo.it/people/paolo/disk_sched/)

[https://lwn.net/Articles/601799/](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
CFQ is best for mechanical hard drives not sure if it is updated for SSDs,
deadline and noop seem better for SSD

~~~
kaixi
Why is this being downvoted? AFAIK, this is mostly true.

~~~
saghm
Random OT question: how can you tell when a comment that isn't yours is being
downvoted? I've seen comments like yours a few times before, but I can't see
the karma on individual posts. Is there a karma threshold for being able to
see this (like the 500 karma threshold for being able to downvote)?

~~~
jsjohnst
You can tell because the font color starts to fade out till you can barely
read the text.

~~~
saghm
Interesting; I'm unable to notice this on the comment being discussed with my
current setup (Firefox on Linux)

~~~
icebraining
That's because it was upvoted back to black since then :)

~~~
saghm
Haha fair enough

------
joecool1029
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager#Atomic_mode_setting)

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

~~~
KenoFischer
Mailing List threads:

[http://marc.info/?t=149861183900003&r=1&w=2](http://marc.info/?t=149861183900003&r=1&w=2)
[http://marc.info/?t=149864742900002&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](http://marc.info/?t=149609949000002&r=1&w=2)

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

~~~
vanderZwan
> _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?

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

------
sp332
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](https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.12)

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we've updated the link from
[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?h=v4.12)
to the official release announcement.

