The 4.20 kernel has been released

[Posted December 24, 2018 by corbet]

Linus has released 4.20 as expected. "Let's face it, last week wasn't quite as quiet as I would have hoped for, but there really doesn't seem to be any point to delay 4.20 because everybody is already taking a break." Some of the headline features in 4.20 include network flow dissectors in BPF, the taprio traffic scheduler, peer-to-peer DMA support in the PCI layer, C-SKY architecture support, the pressure-stall instrumentation mechanism, the XArray data structure, and much more. The KernelNewbies 4.20 page is coming together with more information.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 1:44 UTC (Mon) by unixbhaskar (guest, #44758) [Link]

Yup, worth a gift. Time to play with it. :) Thanks, man! Linus.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 2:46 UTC (Mon) by drroxysmith (guest, #129404) [Link] (14 responses)

Linux Torvalds should go back to the old version of talking smart to clueless idiots. The biggest problem in the Linux world is clueless idiots playing the millenial "move buttons around" game. I know millenials who are so dumb they can't use a calculator, and they're working on GNOME!

Don't do that again

Posted Dec 24, 2018 5:32 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Please take your personal attacks somewhere else; LWN is not the place for that kind of stuff.

Thank you.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 6:35 UTC (Mon) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (11 responses)

These trollish comments are almost always from "guests" with six-digit numbers. Is it time for some sort of moderation system for new accounts, with whitelisting if they post insightful comments? Or is that too much work, or against LWN philosophy?

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 9:46 UTC (Mon) by kay (subscriber, #1362) [Link]

i would second this.

btw: thanks Linus, lwn and all Others. wish you a pacefull christmas.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 13:00 UTC (Mon) by jmanig (guest, #120108) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm always amazed at the level of discussion given that the comment sections are unmonderated.

Can I take a tangent to wish happy holidays to everyone?

This corner of the internet makes me by far a smarter person and for that I am infinitely grateful.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 25, 2018 14:18 UTC (Tue) by naptastic (guest, #60139) [Link] (1 responses)

You are only allowed to wish me happy holidays if I am, therefore, allowed to wish you happy holidays in return.

("Happy holidays" && "Happy holidays to you, too!") must evaluate to True.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 27, 2018 16:11 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I believe you meant to use `iff` there, not `&&` since that forces everyone to accept your greeting and offer their own as well :) .

Moderation

Posted Dec 24, 2018 13:59 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

We have considered adopting some sort of moderation by default for new accounts, mostly in response to outright spam rather than trolling. We may yet get there...

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 22:10 UTC (Mon) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (5 responses)

I think it's enough to keep doing what we have been doing; to collectively ostracise these trolls and leave a permanent record that we find their “philosophy” odious and their ideas trite.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 27, 2018 21:17 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (4 responses)

FWIW I've dramatically scaled back how much attention I give to LWN (and dropped my subscription) because of how unpleasant it is to wade through these kinds of comments looking for the valuable bits. (And this is a comparatively tame one; in the past we've had outright slurs and hate-speech left to stand.)

If you want to leave sewage on your living room floor to prove some kind of point, then that's your right. You can do that. But it's not very welcoming to guests.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 29, 2018 5:25 UTC (Sat) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (2 responses)

That's a shame, but understandable. I've seen some of those less tame posts. I'm not sure what solution would make legitimate users happier while avoiding burning out the staff here - they're in limited supply already.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 29, 2018 10:44 UTC (Sat) by thumperward (guest, #34368) [Link] (1 responses)

Dropping comments entirely was the correct response to this when it was originally suggested. I find it sad that I'm willing to let my subscription lapse when next it's up for the primary reason that I don't want to be seen to be supporting the sort of thing that appears under almost every popular article on here. And guest / new accounts only make up a minority of it.*

* I'm led to believe that upgrading my subscription would also allow me to hide these comments. This exacerbates the problem IMO, as it makes these people into revenue generators.

Dropping comments

Posted Dec 29, 2018 15:13 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Are you suggesting that we turn off the comment feature completely? That seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but I'll point out that there is a preference you can set to simply turn off comments if you don't want to see them at all.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 29, 2018 11:40 UTC (Sat) by rleigh (guest, #14622) [Link]

You're not the only one; I also left for those reasons. I look in now and again, but rarely feed the need to participate. This wasn't solely due to trolling and abuse, it was also due to the partisan nature of comments from people involved in competing commercial interests like RedHat/Fedora vs. Canonical, or competing desktop environments, or whatever. Such comments get tiresome, add little when repeated in every related thread, and aren't going to convince other readers either way. I feel all of these detract from informed discussion, and it descends into sniping along tribal lines, rather than productive technical discussion that can inform and drive change.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 19:24 UTC (Mon) by yoshi314 (guest, #36190) [Link]

his comments were always on point, profanity was just superfluous.

I prefer when he's civil and to the point, because not only does it drive point better but it also drives away the people who don't care about the actual discussion and just follow his posts for his rants.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 7:46 UTC (Mon) by Damian (subscriber, #117834) [Link]

Many thanks to all and merry christmas.

Best regards
Damain

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 10:19 UTC (Mon) by lhastings (guest, #66451) [Link] (1 responses)

4.20 reverts the breakage recently discussed on lkml.

The relevant line from the shortlog is:

Christian Brauner (1):
    Revert "vfs: Allow userns root to call mknod on owned filesystems."

Yup, this was changed between the final RC and release.

A little context: this was a breaking change that shipped in 4.18. Linus made sure it was reverted for 4.20. I don't understand the particulars, but Linus regarded it as "breaking userspace" and he says that's unacceptable. (I agree!)

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 12:13 UTC (Mon) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]

Seems to have been triggered by a SOMEWHAT DRAMATIC NEWS entry in systemd-240:

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2018...

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 10:28 UTC (Mon) by ruscur (guest, #104891) [Link] (7 responses)

The kernelnewbies release summaries are so good. Really seems like the type of thing the Linux Foundation should pay someone to do, though...

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 18:34 UTC (Mon) by dcg (subscriber, #9198) [Link] (6 responses)

I do these changelogs for free, they are quite a lot of work but I'm not sure someone would be willing to pay for them

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 21:30 UTC (Mon) by andyc (subscriber, #1130) [Link]

Your work is greatly appreciated.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 21:33 UTC (Mon) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (1 responses)

I value them, and I'd be willing to pay a bit on Patreon for that work. I think others would as well.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Jan 2, 2019 21:29 UTC (Wed) by aorth (subscriber, #55260) [Link]

I second the thanks and the thought that it would be worth supporting on Patreon or similar. I've referred newbies to KernelNewbies release summaries for *years* and think they are a valuable resource.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 24, 2018 22:33 UTC (Mon) by jhoblitt (subscriber, #77733) [Link]

The condensed changelogs are very much appreciated. I wonder if it would be worth approaching the linux foundation for supporting this work?

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 25, 2018 12:36 UTC (Tue) by Kamilion (subscriber, #42576) [Link]

Thanks for your hard work; I've linked to kernelnewbies thousands of times in IRC, and it's helped many many people.

Work is wasted if no-one hears about it

Posted Jan 3, 2019 15:28 UTC (Thu) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]

Really appreciate all your work - thank you very much! Instead of having to cast around in the large swampy lake of linux documentation and try and figure out what's changed, maybe resorting to git-diffing, busy system administrators and power developers (quaintly described as "kernel newbies") can go straight to kernelnewbies.org to find out why they should care about the new release, and also get valuable links to the relevant LWN articles!

But I do find it extraordinary that it should have to be unpaid. Does no corporate management recognize the value in accessible documentation of all the work that's gone into a new kernel release? Undocumented or un-shouted-about work might as well not have been done in the first place.

Well, I suppose it does get exposure when the various vendor-supported kernel updates are released.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 25, 2018 5:50 UTC (Tue) by alogghe (subscriber, #6661) [Link] (1 responses)

Did the pressure-stall bits make it in actually? I'm not seeing it the notes...

Very excited by this patch as this can really help with Linux at its worst, swap spasming and thrashing. The behaviour in this state is horrific even in 2018.

The 4.20 kernel has been released

Posted Dec 25, 2018 23:15 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Yeah, they landed in commit eb414681d5a07d28d2ff90dc05f69ec6b232ebd2 and later commits: ordinary merge-window stuff.