back to article Torvalds hits 'Go' button for Linux 3.15

Linus Torvalds has pressed the “Go” button on version 3.15 of the Linux kernel. The new release will be welcomed by gamers and laptop owners, as the operating system is now said to suspend and resume operations rather more quickly. There's also support for Sony's DualShock 4 controller and improved drivers for some graphics …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Come on El Reg!

    "Linus Torvalds has pressed the “Go” button on version 3.15 of the ***LINUX KERNEL***

    The new release will be welcomed by gamers and laptop owners, as the ***OPERATING SYSTEM***"

    Linux is not an operating system, it has never been an operating system, it will never be an operating system, it can never be an operating system. It is the kernel, that is all. It does lots of wonderous things and it a joy to behold, but it remains the kernel.

    It will form part of an operating system when someone (e.g. Red Hat, Debian) plumbs it into the rest of the parts and forms an operating system.

    There is a shit-tonne of work that goes into making a Linux-based OS and to keep throwing all the glory on to just the kernel belittles the efforts of others.

    1. Steven Raith

      Re: Come on El Reg!

      Or you could just roll the kernel into your own OS if you're feeling daring, or are developing.

      For e.g. http://www.wikihow.com/Update-Ubuntu-Kernel

      Not to downplay the work that distro maintainers do to maintain stability, but to insinuate that the latest mainline kernel won't be available until it appears in your distros repo sort of missing the point of an open source OS; if you want to throw in the latest kernel, then you can.

      I'll just stick to the repos though. Too lazy to bugfix anything that may come up ;-)

      Steven R

      1. asdf

        Re: Come on El Reg!

        >Or you could just roll the kernel into your own OS if you're feeling daring, or are developing.

        >I'll just stick to the repos though. Too lazy to bugfix anything that may come up ;-)

        If you are running a desktop on any Debian based distro (including Ubuntu) you can compromise by going with the Liquorix kernel and PPA. It tracks Debian sid kernel releases so its not as bleeding edge as can be but much more so than most other mainstream distro releases plus its optimized for the desktop (gaming, media playback, etc). As well as not requiring anything but the usual apt-get upgrade command (no building needed). Technically using a newer linux kernel of course can cause issues with your other older software but in my experience this is extremely uncommon (unless we are talking years between repo kernel and current kernel). More of a concern for me is how long it can take for my repo's kernel to get patched for security bugs considering I track Debian testing. Liquorix (and sid's) kernels get patched much quicker.

        1. asdf

          Re: Come on El Reg!

          Oops noticed I said PPA when technically its just a apt source list entry. Anyway installing it can all be found at http://liquorix.net/

    2. Guus Leeuw

      Re: Come on El Reg!

      Dear Sir,

      there's a marked difference between an Operating System and a full suite of software that is actually useful to humans.

      An Operating System has the job of managing the underlying hardware platform in such a way that certain tasks can be scheduled, memory can be managed, IO operations can be performed. This is, what one would call, the kernel.

      That Microsoft calls Windows an "Operating System" with the obvious implication that the "Operating System" includes a graphical user interface and all sorts of software (calc, notepad, whatnot) is OK with me, but that in itself doesn't mean that an Operating System is anything more than a kernel that manages a well defined set of tasks.

      See Tanenbaum, the ultimate master of teaching Unix and Operating Systems...

      Regards,

      Guus

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Come on El Reg!

        Did I mention a desktop? Did I even mention a graphics stack? No I did not.

        Linux is a kernel. Install that and nothing else, see exactly how far you get (not very). Even on a headless server, Linux requires other tooling around it to serve the various requests that users (be they meat-sacks or other servers) need from the server.

    3. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

      Re: Come on El Reg!

      Richard, is that you?

      1. Anonymous Dutch Coward
        Pint

        Richard

        @Richard: Why not talk some more about freedoms and beer. You know you like it....

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Torvalds hits 'Go' button

    Surely you mean "Torvalds hits the 'F*ck GO!!!1!' button"?

    1. Tom 13

      Re: Torvalds hits 'Go' button

      Read his actual post. It is very orderly and business-ey.

  3. Chemist

    " to suspend and resume operations rather more quickly."

    Maybe on older systems but my i7 laptop (openSUSE 13.2) suspends/resumes so quickly I'm not sure how you'd measure an improvement.

    1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

      Re: " to suspend and resume operations rather more quickly."

      You know, it's really ironic, but all my IBM Thinkpads before my T30 suspended and resumed really quickly, both using Linux and other operating systems.

      But this was all done in the BIOS. It seemed that the first that the OS noticed when resuming was that the clock had jumped.

      Since that time, suspend/resume appears to have been handled by the OS, and it's been getting worse. I've always had problems with Linux restoring the state of the ATI graphics adapters on later Thinkpads and kernels. KMS was an absolute disaster in post 8.04 versions of Ubuntu.

  4. BlueGreen

    these AVX-512 instructions

    512 bits wide. Does this really mean there are 512 bit busses on these chips? Does it also mean there is a 512 bit bus to the main memory (or perhaps 'just' to the cache memory?)

    Mainly, how on earth do you keep something like this fed with data?

    All teh educations welcome

  5. Bladeforce

    Hell..

    ..the Linux kernel is light years ahead of the NT kernel

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