Kernels and Kernel-Level Work
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University of Toronto ☛ How ZFS knows and tracks the space usage of datasets
Anyone who's ever had to spend much time with 'zfs list -t all -o space' knows the basics of ZFS space usage accounting, with space used by the datasets, data unique to a particular snapshot (the 'USED' value for a snapshot), data used by snapshots in total, and so on. But today I discovered that I didn't really know how it all worked under the hood, so I went digging in the source code. The answer is that ZFS tracks all of these types of space usage directly as numbers, and updates them as blocks are logically freed.
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Andi Kleen: Quitting an [defective chip maker] Intel x86 hypervisor
This is an esoteric topic that might be of interest to people implementing defective chip maker Intel hypervisors. It assumes you know the basics of the defective chip maker Intel virtualization architecture, see Hypervisor from scratch for a tutorial. The actual full VT architecture is described in Volume 3 of the Intel SDM
Let’s say we write an x86 hypervisor that starts in the UEFI environment and virtualizes the the initialization phase of an OS. But the hypervisor wants to quit eventually to not cause extra overhead during OS run time. -
Simon Ser ☛ Simon Ser: Status update, March 2025
Hi all!
This month I’ve finally finished my initial work on HDR10 support for wlroots! My branch supports playing both SDR and HDR content on either an SDR or HDR output. It’s a pretty basic version: wlroots only performs very basic gamut mapping, and has a simple luminance multiplier instead of proper tone mapping. Additionally the source content luminance and mastering display metadata isn’t taken into account. Thus the result isn’t as good as it could be, but that can be improved once the initial work is merged!
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Tom's Hardware ☛ AMD RX Vega 64 runs Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at well over 30FPS in Linux with RADV driver
RADV features baked-in ray-tracing software emulation, enabling ray-tracing functionality on AMD GPUs dating back to first-generation GCN GPUs.
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PR Newswire ☛ Honda and KernelCI join the Enabling Linux in Safety Applications (ELISA) Project to Strengthen the Kernel and Drive Innovation in Functional Safety in Automotives
Today, the ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) Project welcomes Honda and KernelCI to its ecosystem. This collaboration marks a significant milestone, as both organizations commit to advancing its commitment to Linux and its effective use in safety-critical applications. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, ELISA is an open source initiative that aims to create a shared set of elements, processes, and tools to help companies build and certify Linux-based safety-critical applications and systems.