JonathanCorbet: recent improvements to the Linux Kernel

JonathanCorbet talks about recent Linux kernel improvements-general Linux technology-Linux programming and kernel information. The following is a detailed description. Jonathan Corbet: he currently lives in bord, Colorado. < > First author, founder and editor-in-chief of LWN online magazine.

Corbert introduced the recent improvements to the linux kernel at this year's linux. conf. au 2007 Sydney conference:

The next kernel release version 2.6.20 will add many new drivers, including USB video drivers, to support USB Web cameras.

Linux supports more and more hardware, but the biggest problem is that the vendor does not release open-source drivers and hardware specifications.

The current kernel wireless code will be gradually replaced by 802.11. Some people are porting the BSD Atheros Wi-Fi driver to Linux. It is estimated that Linux will support more wireless devices within one year.

Now the hard disk is getting bigger and bigger, but the access speed is growing too slowly. linux requires a more advanced file system. ext4 supports larger hard disks and uses 48-bit addressing, breaking the limit of 8 Tb (ext3 ). although there are many interesting ideas about the Reiser 4 file system, its support is still declining, and it will gradually disappear unless someone continues to maintain it.

In terms of virtualization, many Hypervisor (see article 1) uses the paravirt_ops interface to isolate low-level operations. due to a lot of controversy over the use of fully-virtualized Xen technology, it will be very slow to add Xen to the official kernel. KVM has been added to the 2.6.20 kernel to be released and supports semi-virtualization and full virtualization (see Article 2). We will see more new KVM functions (see article 3 ). other Virtualization Technologies using container methods, such as Linux-Vserver and OpenVZ, are lightweight virtualization solutions.

In terms of the development process, new features will be added to the kernel faster than ever before (past years, and now may be months ). some people say that the new development model is too feature-oriented and we have reduced the Kernel Quality for reputation. it is very difficult to prove that the kernel is becoming more stable or unstable.

Corbet concluded: "We have no Five-Year Plan as analysts have said," he said. "People's imagination is free and we cannot force others to do anything ."