As Linux 5.12 released, Linus Torvalds warns next version will probably be rather large Linus Torvalds has emitted version 5.12 of the Linux kernel, and warned the next version looks like a whopper. "Thanks to everybody who made last week very calm indeed, which just makes me feel much happier about the final 5.12 release," he said in his announcement, while referencing last week's post in which he worried the …
"Nothing of substance is usually a good thing in the kernel."
no: why aren't there still no user-space drivers ? And please don't come with that performance argument, because there are people for whom the security of userspace drivers is more important than the performance-hit that comes with it. Today's kernel devs seem to be more inclined to praise systemd, port to some useless platform, and rant about public university research into their garden, rather than explore new grounds.
We have reached peak-linux, it's going downhill from now on.
Microsoft has successfully stopped at Windows 10; why on earth can't these Linux "so called experts" just finish up.
As a Salesforce manager, who has really helped make Salesforce what it is today, when my dev team comes up with ideas for "enhancements" and "fixes", I instantly know it's job security. Nothing more, nothing less. Do I trust my dev team? Not at all. And I know software dev is easy because we pay. ours offshore market rates and they still turn up, tap, click, tap, click, tapping away.
This post has been deleted by its author
@A/c
Microsoft has successfully stopped at Windows 10; why on earth can't these Linux "so called experts" just finish up.
As a Salesforce manager, who has really helped make Salesforce what it is today, when my dev team comes up with ideas for "enhancements" and "fixes", I instantly know it's job security. Nothing more, nothing less. Do I trust my dev team? Not at all. And I know software dev is easy because we pay. ours offshore market rates and they still turn up, tap, click, tap, click, tapping away.
I can glimpse your reason for being a/c
It's because you sound like a right cunt
> this was actually a fairly small release overall [...], 5.13 will be making up for it.
Does size really matter?... I thought it's more about what you do with it...
Seriously, this sounds like there is some kind of "features for features' sake" thing going on there, and while I can understand they want to expand the user base of Linux (to Nintendo users?), complexity tends to add fragility.
"I'm all for diversity in platforms, but does N64 support really belong in the mainline kernel?"
N64 is effectively an SGI in a console. MIPS CPU, Reality Engine, etc. I think you'll find rather than having a large amount of new code written just to support N64, that the existing SGI code (already in kernel) just had some "ifdefs" and tweaks added in to also support N64. Whether MIPS-based SGI support still needs to be in kernel either is another matter, those are long in the tooth these days too.
I must agree with this being a novelty port, though. The 93mhz CPU is no big deal (obviously it's slow but you don't need much CPU power to have fun), but the 4MB RAM is very tight these days. I used a 16mhz 386 system when I started out with Linux, with 4MB RAM (and later with 8MB), and it sucked, not due to the CPU power but the low amount of RAM. Late 1980s-era UNIX systems had 4MB base and preferably 8MB or more. So mid 1990s with 4MB was command-line only (I could start X and run xclock and xterm but that was about it for X software without running out of RAM... I did have a few fun SVGAlib games though like a nice asteroids game and such.) Slackware back then did not use Unicode (I don't know if any Linux distro did), adding Unicode does make current command line software a tad bigger than back then. I recall on my 40MB HD I started out with, having to set 4MB of it for swap so I wouldn't run out of RAM.
Some people asked why it's got N64 support.
The reason for N64 support is that some talented people decided they wanted it and then bloody went and did it.
Given the inevitable heat death of the universe, it is as much a good use of their time as anything else they gain satisfaction from.
I'm kinda jealous, because I don't have an ounce of the talent that those people have. I'm also in awe of them and all the other people that contribute to Linux being what it is.
What bloody amazing people they all are.
Not really. Being a minority/novelty architecture the onus will be on the N64 maintainers ensuring their port continues to work with whatever the kernel does.
Which probably isn't terribly difficult, truth be told. It's fairly close to an SGI as someone else already pointed out, so it's a decently qualified general purpose system, though the CPU's MMU issues do make me wonder why bother. But to each their own.
The main point being that if this port rots there is little incentive to keep it, and its presence will block nothing. However, there is also now a version of Linux that supports N64, and that version will forever be available for hobbyists to play with, and everyone benefits.
Including the developers who scratched their own itch and probably learnt a bunch about N64, Linux, kernel development, team work, collaboration, and open source - and maybe kept sane during a pandemic.
Job's a good'un.
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