back to article For first time in nearly 17 years, stable Linux kernel version has over 999 commits – but not everyone heard about it

A small SNAFU in Linux kernel land meant that a notification regarding the stable review cycle for the 5.16.3 release didn't reach everyone it should have. For the first time in the 31-year history of the Linux kernel, there were over 999 commits to a stable version, which caused a very minor problem. Greg Kroah-Hartman, lead …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NTFS write tests?

    Has anyone tested the write speeds using 'ntfs3' yet? I use 'usbmount' on a kiosk style Jukebox with 'ntfs-3g', but haven't had access to a drive with NTFS to test the speeds. Years back, when copying backing up music to a friend's my external HDD, 'ntfs-3g' made it a "never again" moment.

    1. Tom Chiverton 1

      Re: NTFS write tests?

      I killed my first Windows machine at my first job using ntfs-3g :)

      1. b0llchit Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: NTFS write tests?

        So,..... successful operation. No more reason to use it any more then. Now you are encouraged to revert to (real) native filesystems.

    2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Linux

      Re: NTFS write tests?

      I haven't tested the write latency, but the CPU load generated by large writes has gone way down with the kernel driver, which I infer means that traffic significant enough to cause CPU bottlenecks will perform much better.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: NTFS write tests?

        This is great news, especially for home NAS users and in my Jukebox case, graphically intensive loads already happening (ProjectM seems to hit harder than MilkDrop).

    3. sabroni Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: NTFS write tests?

      Quick, divert attention from the article about stupid linux devs not allocating enough space!

  2. Altrux

    Not quite 31 years

    The kernel has existed for (almost) 31 years, but the -stable series as we now know it has not, I believe! Of course, on the regular Linux -rc releases, it seems there are frequently far more than 999 patches.

    But, turning to the broader question, is this huge patch bomb a good or a bad thing? Have the kernel maintainers become highly proactive and super-productive, to find and fix this many issues in a fairly new 'stable' kernel? Or is this an indication that we have a quality control issue?

    1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Not quite 31 years

      [Article author here]

      As I said: it was *deliberate.* GKH did this intentionally, allowing more than the normal number of commits to see what happened. All that did is one of his scripts failed.

    2. Martyn Welch

      Re: Not quite 31 years

      The stable trees as they currently exist have been a feature for quite a while, Wikipedia suggests since 2005...

      There's a fine line to be trodden when considering updates to a "stable" kernel, or probably any other software to be honest. Too few updates and it becomes a security hole riddled liability. Too many and it's no longer something software written when an earlier point release was current can run on.

      The rules for what can be included in a stable kernel are well defined as it's the process for having changes considered:

      https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/stable-kernel-rules.html

      My gut feeling is that part of the increase in patches being applied to the stable kernel is due to there being more focus on using the stable kernels now than there may have been in the past (which shows it's achieving its goals I suppose and more effort made available to work on them as a result) and there's probably an element of the seemingly never ending increase in kernel contributions resulting in more potential for both bugs and the generation of fixes.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    Murphy's Law Corollary

    Numbers that will never be exceeded will always be exceeded

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

      Re: Murphy's Law Corollary

      Ahhhh. Memories of 22 years ago, as we entered the year 19,100 !

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Murphy's Law Corollary

      So does that mean the script will next fail when it needs to add cc: to msg.00000 or is that msg.2147483648 ?

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