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
US / Canada
UK / Australia
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
-
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.
-
Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
Fedora Linux 43 Beta ships with Gnome 49 and KDE Plasma 6.4 (and other goodies).
-
USB4 Maintainer Leaves Intel
Michael Jamet, one of the primary maintainers of USB4 and Thunderbolt drivers, has left Intel, leaving a gaping hole for the Linux community to deal with.
-
Budgie 10.9.3 Now Available
The latest version of this elegant and configurable Linux desktop aligns with changes in Gnome 49.
-
KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users
It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
-
AMD Initiates Graphics Driver Updates for Linux Kernel 6.18
This new AMD update focuses on power management, display handling, and hardware support for Radeon GPUs.
-
AerynOS Alpha Release Available
With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
-
AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for more than two weeks.