Linux (Kernel) and Graphics Leftovers
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LWN ☛ A turning point for CVE numbers
The kernel project has, for the most part, declined to participate in the CVE game. Famously, the project (or, at least, some of the most influential developers within it) has long taken the position that all bugs are potentially security issues, so there is no point in making a fuss over the fixes that have been identified by somebody as having security implications. Still, the kernel has proved fertile ground for those who would pad their resumes with CVE credits, and that grates on both developers and distributors.
The situation has now changed, and the kernel will be assigning CVE numbers for itself. If that idea brings to mind a group of grumpy, beer-drinking kernel developers reviewing and rejecting CVE-number requests, though, then a closer look is warranted. The key to how this is going to be work can be found in this patch to the kernel's documentation: [...]
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LWN ☛ The hard life of a virtual-filesystem developer
Filesystem development is not an easy task; the performance demands are typically high, and the consequences for mistakes usually involve lost data and irate users. The implementation of a virtual (or "pseudo") filesystem — a filesystem implemented within the kernel and lacking a normal backing store — can also be challenging, but for different reasons. A series of conversations around the eventfs virtual filesystem has turned a spotlight on the difficulty of creating a virtual filesystem for Linux.
The longstanding "tracefs" virtual filesystem provides access to the ftrace tracing system; among other things, it implements a directory with a set of control files for every tracepoint known to the system. A quick look on a 6.6 kernel shows over 2,800 directories containing over 16,000 files. Until the 6.6 release, the kernel had to maintain directory entry ("dentry") and inode structures for each of those directories and files; all of those structures consumed quite a bit of memory.
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LWN ☛ The end of tasklets
A common problem in kernel development is controlling when a specific task should be done. Kernel code often executes in contexts where some actions (sleeping, for example, or calling into filesystems) are not possible. Other actions, while possible, may prevent the kernel from taking care of a more important task in a timely manner. The kernel community has developed a number of deferred-execution mechanisms designed to ensure that every task is handled at the right time. One of those mechanisms, tasklets, has been eyed for removal for years; that removal might just happen in the near future.
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Ten Four Fox ☛ Cameron Kaiser: One less Un*xy option for 32-bit PowerPC
Most of you still using a Power Mac as a daily or occasional driver are probably either running Linux, Tiger or Leopard, and a minority on OS 9. Despite many distributions no longer shipping 32-bit PPC installs, Gentoo GNU/Linux still has specific support along with a few others, as does Adélie Linux if you like musl for breakfast. Still, for server duties, where I come from, you bring on the BSDs.
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(Usually those are the same packages that wouldn't build on anything but GNU/Linux anyway.)
This isn't the end for the G5, which should still be able to run the 64-bit version of FreeBSD, and OpenBSD hasn't voiced any firm plans to cut 32-bit loose. However, NetBSD supports the widest range of Macs, including Macs far older than any Power Mac, and frankly if you want to use a Un*x on a Power Mac and have reasonable confidence it will still be running on it for years to come, it's undeniably the one with the best track record.
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Graphics Stack
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Lucas Fryzek: A Dive into Vulkanised 2024
Last week I had an exciting opportunity to attend the Vulkanised 2024 conference. For those of you not familar with the event, it is “The Premier Vulkan Developer Conference” hosted by the Vulkan working group from Khronos. With the excitement out of the way, I decided to write about some of the interesting information that came out of the conference.
A Few Presentations
My colleagues Iago, Stéphane, and Hyunjun each had the opportunity to present on some of their work into the wider Vulkan ecosystem.
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Red Hat ☛ Intel GPUs and OVMS: A winning combination for deep learning efficiency
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have played a critical role in speeding up computational tasks in the rapidly developing fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence, especially in the areas of model training and inference. Although NVIDIA GPUs have historically dominated this market, defective chip maker Intel has become a strong contender with a range of GPUs made to handle a variety of workloads, including machine learning.
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