Linux 6.3 debuts after 'nice, controlled release cycle'

Linux 6.3 has arrived after a push that project boss Linus Torvalds characterized as "a nice, controlled release cycle" that required the seven release candidates he prefers and was supported by helpful developer behavior. "It happens," he added, but also didn't rule out "something nasty couldn't have been lurking all these …

[hayzoos]

Giving it a try

I have it compiling now. I see it has a few AMD and DRM tweaks I would like to try out. I am glad I took the time to perfect building a kernel image I can just copy to /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI not need any command line params and let the UEFI firmware boot that by default. I really need to config out features and modules I will never use so the build time will be shorter. Just under two hours is not bad, but I know it can be shorter.

[Ozan]

Re: Giving it a try

Would ccache be a good idea for kernel?

[Spamfast]

Re: Giving it a try

Ccache might help but if just building the kernel takes two hours then you need to invest in new hardware.

I Yocto-build an entire openembedded deployable in about twenty minutes, using locally cached git repos for the various userland porcelain, on a 12-core 24-thread Ryzen, 64GiB RAM & a 2T SSD.

YMMV of course.

[hayzoos]

Re: Giving it a try

Thanks for giving your benchmark details. I am compiling on an 8-core 16-thread Ryzen, 64Gb, 1Tb NVME SSD. So you caused me to RTFM. And I found that I had misunderstood the default make behavior is a single job thread. A small tweak to my command line and now the kernel compiles in about 22 minutes. I am using Slackware's huge kernel config as a base so I know it has alot of extra baggage which I should be able to toss with no ill effect. I am a little out of the loop for compiling. It was the 386->Pentium era when I was last routinely compiling anything large, so a 2-hour kernel compile did not seem all that bad to me.

[Crypto Monad]

I219-LM and e1000e driver

"Fresh kernels often include facepalm-grade fixes and this time around there's an update that ensures an Intel gigabit NIC can approach its promised throughput. Since 2020 the kernel has unwittingly throttled it to 60 percent of that speed."

And it's only been a problem for 8 years and 9 months.

More info available via slashdot and phoronix.