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  • imoverclocked · 24 days ago

    Breaking: Linus is on travel.

    Did I miss something about this or is it just another number?

    • dimiprasakis · 24 days ago

      - "Anyway, possible slight hiccups in the merge window aside, the news today is 7.1." - "nothing particularly interesting or scary stands out, which is as it should be."

      So, a number.

      • megous · 24 days ago

        He's just writing about the changes since last week. Not about 7.1 as a whole. No last minute scary things means 7.1 released as planned.

        But 7.1 new features can still be exciting.

      • dietr1ch · 24 days ago

        Yeah, it gets boring when the number change doesn't change and try improving everything at once, but the great thing is that freshness improves driven by number fomo and that tightens the improvement loop.

        Exciting and risky things are always under flags, so if you really care you just build, configure, and bench your own kernel+system.

        • bombcar · 24 days ago

          Surprised nobody will spring for the inflight WiFi for Linus. Has to be some of the best return per dollar that could be spent!

        • globular-toast · 24 days ago

          Is there anything particularly interesting about this? The first number of the version changes when the second number gets too big, not for any other reason.

            • megous · 24 days ago

              Yeah, my favorite $6 Linux machine is now supported (somewhat). :)

              • throwaway85825 · 24 days ago

                What SoC?

                • nijave · 24 days ago

                  AI says probably Rockchip RV1103B which is Luckfox Pico Mini

                  • megous · 24 days ago

                    AI is right. All hail AI. :D

                    • a96 · 23 days ago

                      > Price Range $12.99 - $19.99

                      I'm actually kind of curious what the actual device is.

                      • megous · 22 days ago

                        Well, I bought them when they were selling at $6+$2 for shipping.

                        And it's Luckfox Pico Mini. I guess everything computer related got 100% more expensive during the last year.

                        • nijave · 22 days ago

                          Between RAM prices and tariffs (if you're in the US), cheap stuff got a lot less cheap in the last year

                          Also curious what your use case is? They seem highly catered towards video applications versus more generic IoT like esp*

                • Y-bar · 24 days ago

                  Did anyone see an anime avatar flash by for a fraction of a second before the content loaded? What was that?

                        • anonymous908213 · 24 days ago

                          But not a very accurate blogpost. "Here's why this literally cannot work (in theory)" to denigrate a system that actually works (in practice). Their goal is to convince people to stop using it because it personally inconveniences them, but they never provide an alternative solution that actually solves the problem (in practice) that Anubis actually solves (in practice). If leaving the problem unsolved (in practice) was a desirable option, the site owner would not have turned to Anubis in the first place.

                          • yunwal · 24 days ago

                            I'm totally out of the loop here, where's the evidence that this works in practice?

                            • patchtopic · 24 days ago

                              before and after apache logs showing much less crap in them from bots. Do you think the maintainers of https://lore.kernel.org/ would leave something in that didn't work? It isn't perfect but I have run it on a (much smaller) web site getting hammered by bots and logged "before" and "after" and the difference is measurable.

                              • chlorion · 24 days ago

                                Its literally trivially objectively measurable, this isn't something that is based in opinion.

                                You can throw it up on your own website and simply grep the logs if you don't trust it, or look for the analysis reports from people who have done exactly that.

                                Like the other commenter said, why would linux.org deploy and leave deployed a technology that did nothing? Do they just enjoy trolling users? I doubt it.

                            • HeckFeck · 24 days ago

                              Aw, but what have you against kawaii?

                              • saltamimi · 24 days ago

                                For me, it's a personal preference and in my opinion, it's less professional.

                                • lukeify · 24 days ago

                                  People always seem surprised when someone in CS or SWE doesn't care for anime or cutesy pictorial graphics of girls.

                                  • anonymous908213 · 24 days ago

                                    It's mostly surprising how many grown adult men go into a blind rage when confronted with a picture of a cartoon woman. In a lobsters thread about Anubis, a community member of 12 years got themselves permanently banned because they were frothing at the mouth with accusations of pedophilia against the developer and refused to apologise when given an opportunity by moderators. Telling on themselves, perhaps? It's funny, in a bizarre way, that this is a hill people will die on.

                                    • simoncion · 24 days ago

                                      > ...they were frothing at the mouth with accusations of pedophilia against the developer...

                                      I think I remember that thread. IIRC, it went something very, very roughly like this:

                                        Future banned user: It weirds me out a bit how young the mascot looks. I've never been comfortable with cutesy, underage-looking mascots.
                                        
                                        The dogpile: How dare you insinuate that the dev a pedophile? Don't you know how anti-trans that dogwhistle is?
                                      
                                      and the conversation degraded from there.

                                      I'll also note that you chipped in with

                                      > It's mostly surprising how many grown adult men go into a blind rage when confronted with a picture of a cartoon woman.

                                      when -AFAICT- noone in this subthread expressed anything more heated than "dislike of kawaii". But perhaps you were speaking more generally, and weren't inspired by any conversation that happened in this subthread.

                                    • dormento · 24 days ago

                                      It also serves as a sort of "chud defense", in a way.

                                      I like it.

                                      • DaSHacka · 24 days ago

                                        If anything, its the opposite, going by the number of users with anime girl pfps on Twitter and other social media posting slurs and bigotry.

                                        It's moreso only a loose indicator the user is between the ages of 14-30, if anything.

                                      • TiredOfLife · 24 days ago

                                        For some reason it's always underage girls.

                                        • adrian_b · 24 days ago

                                          How do you determine whether a drawing is "underage"?

                                      • p_l · 24 days ago

                                        Places that want to use Anubis but find the logo not professional enough are free to pay the author, IIRC it was major "professional support" benefit :D

                                        • tempest_ · 24 days ago

                                          If you don't want the anime girl pay for the support, otherwise you get the anime jackal. Seems like a fair deal to me.

                                          • john_strinlai · 24 days ago

                                            everyone knows that penguins are much more professional

                                          • Caracas288 · 24 days ago

                                            its the only weakness of the corpo-capitalist gestalt!

                                        • Shellban · 23 days ago

                                          It is a way to block bots, similarly to Cloudflare or Google's captcha. The Arch Linux website uses it.

                                        • TacticalCoder · 24 days ago

                                          > Linux 7.1 is also notable for its code removals. Driven by AI-assisted bug reporting, ISDN and other old network driver code was removed to avoid that influx of bug reporting against those very rarely touched or used drivers for obsolete hardware.

                                          Moving really old and unused code out of the kernel just to get less AI-assisted bug reports is IMO one of the best consequence ever of AI.

                                          I love it.

                                          We should start trimming the fat out of everything.

                                          • 1over137 · 24 days ago

                                            How about we stop adding the fat in the first place. cough. electron. cough.

                                            • fhdkweig · 24 days ago

                                              Presumably that old code was actually useful at the time it was added. It might not be used now, but it helped someone back then. One of the great things about early Linux was that it tried to run on every piece of hardware available. If Linus only wrote drivers (or allowed others to submit drivers) that worked on his personal computer, Linux would have never flourished this far.

                                            • fn-mote · 24 days ago

                                              > Moving really old and unused code out of the kernel just to get less AI-assisted bug reports

                                              Obviously, the parent is /s, but when I read this, I thought Linux was removing exploit paths that exercise rarely-used features.

                                              On phone OSes at least, quirky rare formats and features are (were?) a common source of exploitable bugs.

                                              • asgraham · 24 days ago

                                                Is the parent really being sarcastic? I read it as genuine.

                                                There’s presumably plenty of code bloat in the kernel, and while no human would ever scan for bugs in a corner of the kernel that hasn’t been used or touched in decades, AI 100% will. And while those bug reports might be useless as bug reports, they seem promising as “why is this code even here?” flags.

                                                • dormento · 24 days ago

                                                  I don't mean to be harsh, but if there's a codepath that is exercised on your hardware, but not on mine, I don't think it would be fair for me to deem it as "bloat". There are a TON of supported devices and use cases that are not my own, but are essential to someone else.

                                                  • WD-42 · 24 days ago

                                                    If you are still using ISDN you could maintain a fork.

                                                    This is one of the main examples of drivers that were removed.

                                                    • asgraham · 24 days ago

                                                      Sure, sure. I’m not arguing for removing drivers for uncommon devices, or even rare devices. But there’s a line somewhere. Maybe it’s at “devices that no longer exist.” But I think it’s somewhere before that. And I have no idea how you’d figure out which devices fall where around this hypothetical line. I can only hope that they had good justification for these removals.

                                                      • franktankbank · 23 days ago

                                                        Maybe that points to an architecture issue? Is kernel driver support general enough to support all hardware in theory? If so it should be on hardware to provide a compatible api IMO. Note: I really have no experience in any of this there is probably more important things to consider like security/control or something.

                                                    • rixed · 24 days ago

                                                      Exploit paths in unloaded modules, I guess.

                                                    • knorker · 24 days ago

                                                      Code is liability. AI just made it harder to ignore.

                                                      • linsomniac · 24 days ago

                                                        >We should start trimming the fat out of everything.

                                                        "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

                                                        One of my buddies was infamous for a while for being the "I deleted X lines of code today" guy.

                                                        • space_ghost · 24 days ago

                                                          >"Perfection is achieved..."

                                                          I, too, am a fan of RFC 1925.

                                                          • jamesfinlayson · 24 days ago

                                                            I remember working with a guy who apparently deleted more code than he added in his time at the company. I think it said more about the codebase than anything but it was good that someone was trying to make it better.

                                                            • darnir · 24 days ago

                                                              Funnily, I have been that guy at the last 3 places I've worked at. Every place has some amount of cruft code, and I love sniffing it out and deleting it.

                                                          • conorcleary · 24 days ago

                                                            Chesterton's Fence...

                                                            • speed_spread · 24 days ago

                                                              It's ok, you can let go of Chesterton's ISDN phone pole now. Come, we have cable, we have fiber. Just for you, I'll even fire up a little hotspot from the palm of my hand as we walk away.

                                                              • zamadatix · 23 days ago

                                                                Chesterton's Fence only says to learn why the fence was erected, it gives no other guidance on what to do after that. There isn't too much mystery in why a device driver was made, so Chesterton's Fence yields next to nothing here.

                                                                • conorcleary · 23 days ago

                                                                  The ground strap on a device is only used temporarily, too

                                                              • SoftTalker · 24 days ago

                                                                This is the sort of thinking that had organizations buying all new desktops because the perfectly working ones they had won't run Windows 11.

                                                                I have 10 year old servers I'm still using because they run fine with linux.

                                                                • echelon · 24 days ago

                                                                  That's good for your personal computing, but a renewing forest fire is good for all sorts of organizations. And species. It's a very good algorithm to run.

                                                                  It's naturally de-ossifying and forces uptake of new methods and practices.

                                                                  It gives you an opportunity to question assumptions and do things greenfield again.

                                                                  • nine_k · 24 days ago

                                                                    The old unmaintained ISDN hardware for which the code has been removed is likely 20 years old, or so. The perfectly good laptops are usually 3-4 times younger.

                                                                    • bitfilped · 24 days ago

                                                                      FreeBSD and NetBSD aren't going anywhere and can be used for older hardware, for the amount of production and load bearing use Linux sees there's an enormous amount of cruft and garbage in it.

                                                                    • _carbyau_ · 24 days ago

                                                                      > very rarely touched or used drivers for obsolete hardware

                                                                      I guess end users can not upgrade but a definition of obsolete would be nice.

                                                                      To me, every HP printer ever is obsolete. But I assume someone else has an equally valid and different opinion. How does that go with computer hardware?

                                                                      • philodeon · 24 days ago

                                                                        I’ve tried to submit code that removed old drivers from the kernel build in some distros, and they were universally rejected.

                                                                        Everyone is afraid of breaking users until Torvalds says it’s ok.

                                                                      • ares623 · 24 days ago

                                                                        From 6 to 7

                                                                        • betimsl · 24 days ago

                                                                          what a legend!

                                                                          • GreenSalem · 24 days ago

                                                                            Current default for Arch is 7.0.10

                                                                            Looking forward to 7.1 rolling out soon.

                                                                            • senectus1 · 24 days ago

                                                                              Fedora is in a few months I think. currently on 7.0.12

                                                                            • smetannik · 24 days ago

                                                                              Looking forward for a new NTFS driver to try. I hope this new iteration will be better than ntfs3 from Paragon.

                                                                              • joecool1029 · 24 days ago

                                                                                It’s good. I packaged it in my gentoo overlay and have been using it for a couple months, none of the weird issues ntfs3 had.

                                                                                • bubblethink · 24 days ago

                                                                                  What is lacking in the previous one? NTFS support in linux is mostly to read and write files from windows disks, right? I think all the NTFS linux drivers - even the fuse one before the Paragon one - have been alright at that.

                                                                                  • xattt · 24 days ago

                                                                                    The Paragon v3 NTFS driver was in perpetual beta with a scary warning about data loss whenever it was enabled.

                                                                                    I think users moved on when they saw no real harm in continuing to use it.

                                                                                    • aero_code · 24 days ago

                                                                                      Ubuntu switched to the Paragon NTFS driver by default. When I upgraded to kernel 6.5 (I think) from Ubuntu, I started getting frequent kernel panics, like every day. Soon, I noticed that I couldn't even compile a Rust project on an NTFS partition because the compiler was getting random file system errors, and compiling was at high risk of causing a kernel panic. The NTFS driver in that kernel version is just totally broken. I switched to the FUSE NTFS-3G, and then I stopped getting panics and can compile stuff again no problem.

                                                                                      Looking at kernel commits, it looks like the driver may have been fixed since, but I'm scared to use it after it had such major brokenness in that version.

                                                                                      • jchw · 24 days ago

                                                                                        It wound up being OK, but it had a long span of time where it was virtually unmaintained and turned out to be buggy at points. The newer NTFS driver is based off of the old read-only NTFS driver which subjectively many claim is cleaner (I honestly haven't done a head to head so idk) and they're having an easier time modernizing it with support for things like large folios. Seems like a good deal to me.

                                                                                        Personally: I used NTFS3 and it was alright. If anything the biggest thing I got hit by was an issue where the udisks2 mount call from Dolphin would result in NTFS-3g specific flags getting sent to it, causing the mount to fail. But in actual usage it actually worked just fine for me.

                                                                                    • drake99 · 24 days ago

                                                                                      how many new code came from AI ?

                                                                                      • bulletsvshumans · 24 days ago

                                                                                        3

                                                                                        • pixel_popping · 23 days ago

                                                                                          yeah about 3 to 5 codes /s

                                                                                      • johnnytech · 23 days ago

                                                                                        My favroite kernel version is 6.1.34. Traditional framebuffers for the win!

                                                                                        • nurettin · 23 days ago

                                                                                          Looking back, I wonder what really changed over 25 years for the linux ecosystem. We had lots of distros, there were games built for linux (I remember playing the entire Neverwinter nights on debian) there was wine for StarCraft broodwars, x11+compiz for cool accelerated desktop graphics, proprietary Nvidia drivers were always there. Sure, everything was 32bit but it was good enough for desktop, and amd64 was about to pop.

                                                                                          The other day I tried to install fedora 44 on a friend's computer. He wanted kde so we set that up and whoops, no way to start programs on the discrete video card. I hacked around it by starting xorg, setting an alias and environment variables, but it was a bit embarrassing to see that things have regressed.