from Hacker News

Linux 4.12 Released

by slyzmud on 7/3/17, 6:17 PM with 74 comments

• by avar on 7/3/17, 8:04 PM

  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}

• by ganeshkrishnan on 7/3/17, 6:38 PM

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

• by jug on 7/4/17, 5:56 AM

  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

• by mariocesar on 7/3/17, 6:42 PM

  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

• by joecool1029 on 7/3/17, 8:06 PM

  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...

• by KenoFischer on 7/3/17, 10:20 PM

  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.

• by shmerl on 7/3/17, 7:59 PM

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

• by sp332 on 7/3/17, 6:33 PM

  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