Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
Improving Netfilter Efficiency; Protecting Memory from Malicious Modification; and Speeding Up Workarounds for Intel Security Flaws.
Improving Netfilter Efficiency
Netfilter has some speed issues. Speed is always a focus of Linux development, but recent workarounds for widespread Intel hardware security flaws have resulted in significant slowdowns in the kernel. So lately, there's been even more incentive to improve speed wherever possible.
Netfilter is a generic kernel tool that allows system administrators to perform a wide array of operations on data packets moving through a network. However, as Imre Palik pointed out recently, netfilter was implemented with flexibility in mind, rather than efficiency. Even when a system performs no operations at all on network packets, simply hitting the netfilter hooks can slow things down a lot.
Imre posted a patch to address this issue. His idea was that if netfilter wasn't being used, then the kernel shouldn't hit its code at all. This would eliminate the slowdown. Of course, for systems that did use netfilter, the slowdown would remain. And this proved to be the big stumbling block for his patch.
[...]
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
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.