
Linux 4.7 Released - jrepin
https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/7/24/151
======
jrepin
New in Linux 4.7:
[https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.7](https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.7)

~~~
15DCFA8F
I don't know who maintain those changelogs, but WOW, thanks for this great
detailed and methodical piece of work.

~~~
jrepin
According to the info pages for last few releases, the most work was done by
Diego Calleja <diegocg@gmail.com>

------
voltagex_
Honest question: how many years do you think it'll be until embedded device
manufacturers (routers, various TV boxes, wifi hard drives [1]) ship recent
kernels? A $200 modem/router bought 6 months ago ships with a hacked up
version of 2.6.36.4 that's barely buildable - mainly because the wifi chipset
vendor refuses to open source their code and refuses to update the BSP [2].

1:
[http://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloads/item/wireless...](http://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloads/item/wireless-
plus-gpl-fw-master-dl/)

2: [http://www.tp-link.com.au/gpl-code.html?model=Archer%20D9](http://www.tp-
link.com.au/gpl-code.html?model=Archer%20D9)

~~~
grawlinson
>mainly because the wifi chipset vendor refuses to open source their code and
refuses to update the BSP

In that case, never. Trying to get vendors to open source anything is a
hilarious exercise in futility.

~~~
ashitlerferad
If you want to help the folks who are trying to get vendors to open source
their Linux drivers/patches, check out these pages:

[https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/](https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/)
[http://gpl-violations.org/helping/](http://gpl-violations.org/helping/)

~~~
voltagex_
I'm a big fan of both of those - but their backlogs are massive.

I'm hoping there's another donation matching campaign at LCA2017 for
Conservancy next year - I was able to donate somewhere close to $300 via that
last year.

------
dominotw
>CPU accounting controller: Split cpuacct.usage into user usage and sys usage
commit

Has anyone used this to calculate how many containers can be packed onto a
machine based on historical usage data?

~~~
epberry
That's a pretty interesting idea... I suppose you would make a guess at first
to allocate containers and then adjust over time automatically? But in a
monitored environment you're already going to know those stats so actually I'm
not sure how this helps.

~~~
dominotw
I was thinking more of a use case like CI system where we can use these values
to figure out how many builds to run on a machine based on past history.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I see there's support for the new Radeon RX480. I've been thinking about
picking up a Radeon card. Can anyone speak to their experience of Radeon
support on Linux and whether or not you think it's a good idea?

~~~
nialv7
The kernel driver for newer AMD cards is developed and open sources by AMD
itself . For the user land, you have choice between the open source driver,
Mesa, or the proprietary one, AMDGPU-PRO.

If you want to follow the advancement of Linux graphics stack (while having
reasonable graphic performance), AMD is your choice. This is where the
exciting new stuff, like Wayland, DRI3 etc. happens. The NVIDIA proprietary
driver indeed has amazing performance, but is falling behind on this regard.

------
dopeboy
Could anyone comment on the state of power management in Linux? Are we up to
par with OSX and Windows yet?

~~~
dman
Depends on the hardware and the amount of effort you put in. If you stick to
purely Intel chips (cpu, gpu and wifi) if you spend the 5 minutes it takes to
get powertop happy then you end up with equivalent battery life to windows.
(Basing this on thinkpad t440 and thinkpad t450).

On my AMD APU laptop, I have been unable to get battery life to be similar to
windows.

~~~
Zagitta
Sadly this isn't quite the case with skylake IGPU, there's a ton of issues
with power management options rendering the system very unstable or down right
unusable.

Also worth noting is that NVME ssd power management is flat out unsupported
resulting in additional 3W power draw on DELL XPS 13 pcs out of the 6W that's
currently possible with stable power options enabled.

~~~
zbraniecki
Just to put those words in context - I use Dell XPS 13 with Linux 4.7 and my
power usage drops to 4.1 Watt discharge rate and holds an average of 6 W when
I'm on average use.

That means that I usually have around 7-8 hours of battery on my average use,
and if I'm in a battery-sensitive environment like a long flight, I can reduce
screen brightness and turn off wifi and get up to 14 hours of battery.

Right at this moment I have Fx with 2 windows, 10 tabs each, half-brightness,
wifi on, and I'm at 5.78 W, 87% battery with 9h 28m left estimated.

I believe Windows may have even better, and I see my NVMe not dropping to the
lowest power saving state, but it's not that bad IMO :)

~~~
igravious
Which revision of the Dell XPS 13? Thanks in advance!

~~~
zbraniecki
The 2016 Skylake Developer Edition, with i5, FHD and 8GB ram. Works great with
Ubuntu 16.04 and Gnome 3.

------
jshap70
too bad we'll never get a name as good as 'Hurr durr I'ma sheep' again

~~~
vacri
Link for perusal:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names)

------
qwertyuiop924
Just so long as kdbus hasn't been merged yet...

~~~
tangent128
It appears that kdbus is being reworked into BUS1[0]; the new API looks a lot
less warty.

[0] [http://www.bus1.org/bus1.html](http://www.bus1.org/bus1.html)

~~~
qwertyuiop924
That looks... better, but still ugly. I'd rather the whole thing was killed.

~~~
digi_owl
Won't happen, as systemd relies on dbus too much (to the point that it may
well panic the kernel by shutting down if dbus goes belly up).

I do believe that right now you basically have to start dbus using initramfs
so that it is ready for use by the time the kernel starts up systemd.

Franky the number of things that they cram into initramfs on a systemd based
distro is nauseating.

