Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.
Fixing Memory Usage by Not Fixing It
Al Viro recently posted some "flagday" patches – changes that were so invasive, they couldn't be done piecemeal. His idea was to convert the kernel memory handling APIs so that functions like free_page() and a bunch of others would return a pointer instead of just a plain number. His thinking was that everyone doing anything with RAM wanted to get a usable memory pointer, instead of having to do a typecast every time they called the memory handling functions.
Linus Torvalds, however, put the kibosh on the whole idea. Changing an API that had been in place for almost the entire lifespan of the Linux kernel project would cause a lot of confusion among developers. It would also, he said, make backporting new features to earlier versions of the kernel an even bigger headache than it already was, because the backport would have to make sure it undid all of Al's flagday changes, just to get a patch that would successfully apply to the earlier kernel version.
The proper way to do what Al had proposed, said Linus, would be to create a new set of functions that had different names and to allow both versions of each function to exist side by side. That way, people could migrate their portions of the kernel to the new functions in a piecemeal way over time.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
KDE Unleashes Plasma 6.5
The Plasma 6.5 desktop environment is now available with new features, improvements, and the usual bug fixes.
-
Xubuntu Site Possibly Hacked
It appears that the Xubuntu site was hacked and briefly served up a malicious ZIP file from its download page.
-
LMDE 7 Now Available
Linux Mint Debian Edition, version 7, has been officially released and is based on upstream Debian.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Reaches EOL
Linux kernel 6.16 has reached its end of life, which means you'll need to upgrade to the next stable release, Linux kernel 6.17.
-
Amazon Ditches Android for a Linux-Based OS
Amazon has migrated from Android to the Linux-based Vega OS for its Fire TV.
-
Cairo Dock 3.6 Now Available for More Compositors
If you're a fan of third-party desktop docks, then the latest release of Cairo Dock with Wayland support is for you.
-
System76 Unleashes Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta
System76's first beta of Pop!_OS 24.04 is an impressive feat.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
-
Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
-
Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.

