Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News

© Linux Magazine Exclusive
The Linux kernel mailing list comprises the core of Linux development activities. Traffic volumes are immense, often reaching ten thousand messages in a given week, and keeping up to date with the entire scope of development is a virtually impossible task for one person. One of the few brave souls to take on this task is Zack Brown.
Our regular monthly column keeps you abreast of the latest discussions and decisions, selected and summarized by Zack. Zack has been publishing a weekly online digest, the Kernel Traffic newsletter for over five years now. Even reading Kernel Traffic alone can be a time consuming task.
Linux Magazine now provides you with the quintessence of Linux Kernel activities, straight from the horse's mouth.
Maintainer Updates
Kentaro Takeda has created an entry for the Tomoyo Security Module in the MAINTAINERSHIP file and listed himself and Tetsuo Handa as co-maintainers.
The I2C mailing list is following the general stampede of Linux mailing lists away from their own individual servers and onto vger.kernel.org. Greg Kroah-Hartman has posted a patch removing all references to the old mailing list at lm-sensors.org from the MAINTAINERS file and replacing them with references to mailto:linux-i2c@vger.kernel.org.
Thomas Sujith has created an entry for Intel's Menlow thermal drivers and listed himself as the official maintainer.
Bjorn Helgaas has added himself as a co-maintainer, along with the existing maintainer Adam Belay, of plug-and-play support. Actually, he added himself back in August, but with Andi Kleen pushing the code upstream and Len Brown taking it and incorporating it into the kernel, a multi-month gap developed.
Making Sense of All the Clocks
Jonas Bonn has been thinking a lot about clocks. A given system can have various clocks, including the CPU clock, the bus clock, and clocks on various external devices. The tools available to deal with the various clocks, such as cpuidle and cpufreq, tend to provide overlapping features, Jonas says, while requiring special handling on a system-by-system basis. Jonas has proposed creating a single overarching API to allow the programmer to set various constraints, such as the target power usage on a given system, while handling the coordination of all clocks on the system behind the scenes so the developer won't have to think about it.
Various folks like Jon Smirl spoke in favor of this general idea but also pointed out that it was similar to other efforts already underway. As Mark Brown pointed out, Dmitry Baryshkov had been working on a generic version of the existing clk API, and Alan Jenkins mentioned an OMAP project coming out of the Ottawa Linux Power Management Summit in July. After examining these various alternatives, Jonas decided that the best way forward would be to enhance the API in the existing clk code. He said, "I have implemented this interface for the S3C2410, and it provides the functionality that I want, namely that clocks become first-class citizens and can be adjusted without specific knowledge about all the underlying devices that may or may not be using them at any given time."
ConfigFS Supports IR Devices
Jon Smirl has coded up support in ConfigFS for infrared input devices. With the use of his code, pressing buttons on IR input devices will cause a lookup within the ConfigFS directory tree to identify the appropriate keycode to generate and, from there, the corresponding keystroke. Therefore, it is now possible to use infrared keyboards under Linux that will comfortably transmit user input through ConfigFS and into the system.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
News
-
Titan Linux is a New KDE Linux Based on Debian Stable
Titan Linux is a new Debian-based Linux distribution that features the KDE Plasma desktop with a focus on usability and performance.
-
Danielle Foré Has an Update for elementary OS 7
Now that Ubuntu 22.04 has been released, the team behind elementary OS is preparing for the upcoming 7.0 release.
-
Linux New Media Launches Open Source JobHub
New job website focuses on connecting technical and non-technical professionals with organizations in open source.
-
Ubuntu Cinnamon 22.04 Now Available
Ubuntu Cinnamon 22.04 has been released with all the additions from upstream as well as other features and improvements.
-
Pop!_OS 22.04 Has Officially Been Released
From the makers of some of the finest Linux-powered desktop and laptop computers on the market comes the latest version of their Ubuntu-based distribution, Pop!_OS 22.04.
-
Star Labs Unveils a New Small Format Linux PC
The Byte Mk I is an AMD-powered mini Linux PC with Coreboot support and plenty of power.
-
MX Linux Verison 21.1 “Wildflower” Now Available
The latest release of the systemd-less MX Linux is now ready for public consumption.
-
Microsoft Expands Their Windows Subsystem for Linux Offerings With AlmaLinux
Anyone who works with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) will now find a new addition to the available distributions, one that’s become the front-runner replacement for CentOS.
-
Debian 11.3 Released wIth Numerous Bug and Security Fixes
The latest point release for Debian Bullseye is now available with some very important updates.
-
The First Alpha of Asahi Linux is Available
Asahi Linux is the first distribution to fully support Apple Silicon and is now available for testing.