Linux 5.19 Adds 500K Lines of New Graphics Driver Code (phoronix.com) 79
UnknowingFool writes: The current Linux kernel in development, 5.19, added 495,793 new lines of code for graphic driver updates. David Airlie sent in the new lines as part of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem of Linux. The majority of additions were for AMD's RDNA and CDNA platforms but Intel also submitted changes for their DG2 graphics as well. Updates also came from Qualcomm and MediaTek for their GPU offerings.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
If the use of the 'k' is confusing you Yanks, it's around 0.0005 Libraries of Congress, or approximately 94.585 feet.
Re: (Score:2)
What the heck is lines of code a measure of?
It's a metric managers love that means something to them, but no one who actually writes them -- along with the even more meaningless "delta" variety.
Re: (Score:2)
I seriously couldn't tell if he was just trying to make a bad joke.
Re: (Score:2)
The average programmer writes 10 lines of debugged code per day, according to The Mythical Man-Month [wikipedia.org] , so that represents up to 250 years of work, or tens of million of dollars.
Re: (Score:3)
So it'll take 250 years of debugging work before all the bugs in this new code are fixed. Great.
Re: (Score:1)
You may want to debug your own English parsing routine and when you're done feed the parent's comment through it again.
Re: (Score:2)
So ifaman,....writes x amount of debugged code a day, how much y bugged code is written?
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the effort of programming goes into debugging which is why when you average over the life of a project the programmer ultimately only achieves 10 lines a day. This isn't a case of slow programmers spending an entire day thinking about bug-free code. This is a case of programmers churning out buggy code and then spending weeks cleaning debugging it, testing it, and shipping it bug free.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but the average programmer can also churn out 1000 lines of non-debugged crap a day, so it's really only 2.5 years of work.
Six months if they had Bawls available.
Re: (Score:2)
500k lines of code .. that's a good thing, right? How much is that in football fields?
That depends...do you print on A4 or Letter?
Re: (Score:2)
Why would that matter with regards to football fields? You should ask font size instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would that matter with regards to football fields? You should ask font size instead.
... and also specify if we are talking about an American football field or what the rest of the world calls a football field.
Re: (Score:2)
Noting that a soccer pitch can vary in size by quite a bit so using it as a unit of measurement is particularly dumb. The length of the pitch can vary between 90m and 120m and the width between 45m and 90m, with a tighter set of dimensions for international matches.
As a side note the wikipedia page for "Football pitch" is for Association football aka soccer.
I don't see the problem (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, adding lots of code is always something that needs a good reason and needs to be done carefully or the project will go to hell. That said, all this code is completely optional on a headless server and will not even be present if basic hardening is done. And on a reasonably hardened desktop you will only compile or install the modules for the hardware actually present. So not a problem at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, plus the kernels very modular. If its presenting a problem, just switch it out for a different module. Or in the case of headless, dont even load that module at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Good design overall.
Re:I don't see the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Few people produce minimized kernels anymore. It's rarely worth the extra testing time and support time, especially when some bit of software is unexpectedly reliant on a specific graphics driver. Being headless does not mean that a server may not transform graphics images, for example.
Re: (Score:2)
True. I can't remember the last time I recompiled a kernel. Nowadays, it's rare to even modprode anything.
Re: (Score:2)
Few people produce minimized kernels anymore.
Well, yes. Many people are indeed completely incompetent when it comes to IT security. There are reasons why the current ransomware epidemic is so massive and starts to affect Linux as well. Incidentally, in regulated environments, you are often _required_ to harden some systems and that means minimizing the kernel among other things.
Re: (Score:2)
Spending developer or sys-admin time optimizing kernels is an excellent example of what Donald Knuth referred to as "premature optimization". If I may quote him, “The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.”
Recompiling kernels is fragile. It's very easy to fracture a stable system with the wrong compilation environme
Re: (Score:3)
On a desktop system, I don't want to mess around with anything. I just want to use it as it is. I've been working exclusively with linux on servers and desktops since 1998, and at this point in life I don't want to tinker with anything that I don't need. In early 2000s you had to tinker with your desktop to make it work, servers were ok, and that was fun. Now it's just a drag.
Anyway, they did not just add code... they added half a million lines of code (not improvements or features, but DRM) and that's con
Re:I don't see the problem (Score:4, Informative)
> not improvements or features, but DRM
Um, you do know that in this case DRM means Direct Rendering Manager, ie the kernel the kernel's GPU subsystem (written in the article). So in effect all this is new features (supporting new hardware). And a lot of the code is autogenerated headers for various hardware revisions.
Re: (Score:2)
Um, you do know that in this case DRM means Direct Rendering Manager, ie the kernel the kernel's GPU subsystem (written in the article).
Indeed, very funny to have picked up that name and acronym from the Linux guys.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not only is the acronym explained in TFA, it's explained in TFS!!!!
Re: (Score:2)
> not improvements or features, but DRM
Um, you do know that in this case DRM means Direct Rendering Manager, ie the kernel the kernel's GPU subsystem (written in the article). So in effect all this is new features (supporting new hardware). And a lot of the code is autogenerated headers for various hardware revisions.
Hehehehe, indeed. Spotted the clueless one.
Re:I don't see the problem (Score:5, Funny)
Shit, if that's not proof that it's the year of the Linux Desktop, I don't know what the hell is.
Re: (Score:2)
You use Linux as your main OS, and you didn't know what DRM meant in the context of graphics drivers?
Shit, if that's not proof that it's the year of the Linux Desktop, I don't know what the hell is.
Sad as it is, I agree that the massive influx of the clueless into the Linux-space is a good indicator.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hehehhe, sorry about that.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I guess it was just a matter of time before they added DRM to the Linux kernel. If Stallman weren't still alive, he'd be rolling over in his grave.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I do. I was there when Brian Lamacchia presented "Palladium" at MIT, which was later misnamed as "Trusted Computing". It should have bee named "Trust Microsoft with your boot hardware stored encryption keys and signature authority to revoke or replace them".
Brian didn't expect Stallman to be present. Richard expressed himself quite firmly, and pointed out that it obviously wasn't designed for security, it was designed to lock people out of hardware and software they'd bought. Brian also didn't expect anyone
Re: (Score:2)
I do. I was there when Brian Lamacchia presented "Palladium" at MIT, which was later misnamed as "Trusted Computing". It should have bee named "Trust Microsoft with your boot hardware stored encryption keys and signature authority to revoke or replace them".
Because if there's one thing that Microsoft is good at it's security. I'm sure everybody here is living in fear of the consequences of Microsoft's excellent track record at producing secure systems devoid of vulnerabilities.
Re: (Score:2)
But newsflash, he's not running GNU/Hurd on his PC.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh he loves to pretend like he doesn't.
People love inventing weird lies about Stallman.
https://stallman.org/stallman-... [stallman.org]
"I use a Thinkpad T400s computer, which has a free initialization program (libreboot) and a free operating system (Trisquel GNU/Linux)"
It's the first actual line of text (you know excluding headings).
So where precisely is he pretending he doesn't run Linux?
Re: (Score:2)
Let's recap.
GP said:
I don't recall Stallman giving two shits about Linux.
I said:
Oh he loves to pretend like he doesn't.
Now, let's actually quote RMS on the matter:
The main error is that Linux is not strictly speaking part of the GNU system—whose kernel is GNU Hurd. The version with Linux, we call “GNU/Linux.” It is OK to call it “GNU” when you want to be really short, but it is better to call it “GNU/Linux” so as to give Torvalds some credit.
There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels.
Read better.
Re: (Score:2)
Read better.
OK, fair. You have my apologies, I misread, or at least heavily rounded up to something you didn't say and angrily replied.
Re: (Score:2)
I respect RMS'... movement. I respect what he's accomplished.
But I always found it a bit funny that he was so dismissive toward Linux, when it's the only kernel that's realistically paired with his "GNU System".
At the end of the day, there are non-GNU alternatives for Linux (of varying quality and weirdness), but there are no real Linux alternatives to GNU.
Linus Torvalds is what made GNU matter, and I think RMS is bitter about that. And I think the best example of that, is that he personal
Re: (Score:1)
To hell with RTFA.... did you even RTFS???
DRM is clearly indicated as a TLA for "Direct Rendering Managre", a major graphics subsystem. In this context, it has absolutely nothing to do with Digital Restrictions Management.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow. Whoosh much?
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect they might have done this on purpose as kind of a joke.
Probably no working NVIDIA drivers yet, though. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How hard does it gotta be to integrate NVIDIA drivers into Linux, for God's sake?!
Are you suggesting that everyone should work extra hard, entirely on their own, to get some closed source crap working because you like Nvidia?
They recently announced that they are finally going to contribute, so let's see how that plays out.
Bitching that a bunch of people working on their own aren't furthering the desires of an open source hostile company like Nvidia doesn't seem useful.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you suggesting that everyone should work extra hard, entirely on their own, to get some closed source crap working because you like Nvidia?
More likely because the support provided by the open source nouveau driver is so bad for so many Nvidia devices as to be practically useless, and also the fact that many systems out there ship with Nvidia hardware.
Re: (Score:1)
I believe they recently announced work on an open source version of their driver.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, right now there is an open source accelerated driver in Linux for nvidia called "nouveau".
Re: (Score:2)
And it's fantastically terrible unless you're working with a desktop with a 3+ year old GPU in it. Everyone else installs proprietary drivers from Nvidia, or has to blacklist nouveau just to get their Optimus-equipped laptop to boot up at all, or both.
Re: (Score:2)
NVidia keeps modifying the suite of kernel and of userland graphical libraries that interact with the kernel. So it's not as easy as you might think. It's especially difficult because they'd need to publish it as GPL, which means the secret tuning to cheat in well-known graphics benchmarks would be apparent to all.
Re: (Score:2)
But this has nothing to do with why Nvidia drivers for linux
Re: (Score:2)
NVidia has repeatedly been caught cheating at benchmark tests. They were caught cheating in the TPCx-BB tests last year
* https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
I'm confused why you think "they wouldn't do it because they'd be caught" reliably prevents abuse, or even criminal fraud, involving benchmarks. That's specially a risk if there is a long delay between cheating the benchmark and getting caught at it. The benefits are very high and the penalty for getting caught are often accepted as part of the cost of doi
Re: (Score:2)
Publish it like this [nvidia.com]?
Oh hey lookie there - GPL and MIT licensing for open-source Nvidia kernel modules, announced and released a week ago. Feel free to dig through the source to find proof of your accusations [github.com] or shut the fuck up.
I just love it when people bitch about companies not doing "the right thing" when they actually finally have.
Re: (Score:2)
The rest of the necessary tools don't necessarily have such licenses. A check of the libEGL libraries shows better licensing, but no updates in 4 years. Assembling all the necessary bits to provide the full suite is not not as certain or as thorough as we might want in open source development, and some skepticism is justified.
Re: (Score:2)
Define driver. Do you want 3D graphics? Seems to work just fine here. Do you want up to date weekly patched game ready drivers for high performance gaming? Then you'll need to convince more people to actually game on Linux before a vendor will deem that worthwhile.
Or do you just want everything open source due to some sense of purity or entitlement over someone else's commercial offering?
Re: (Score:2)
This.
Plus AMD already has open source drivers, if that's so much better of a route to go then support them. I don't understand how people are so keen to support companies that don't support them and then whine about it while shunning the companies that do support them. If AMD is already giving you everything you're asking for why not show them some support? Or is it some sense of necessity reach out and help poor Nvidia from hurting themselves by making bad decisions?
Re: (Score:2)
Nvidia disagrees that it's a "bad" decision, since they decided to open source their driver [github.com] a week ago.
What else have you got?
Re: (Score:2)
Nvidia disagrees that it's a "bad" decision, since they decided to open source their driver [github.com] a week ago.
I didn't say open sourceing the kernel mode component was a bad decision, clearly they don't think it was a bad decision otherwise they wouldn't have done it. Of course the user-land component is closed (as that includes their proprietary technologies like the CUDA implementation) and the open component is only for Turing and Ampere architectures. All I'm saying is AMD already has a completely open driver stack so if you really want that then it already exists (and has done for some time).
Re: (Score:2)
How hard does it gotta be to integrate NVIDIA drivers into Linux, for God's sake?!
Linux + NVIDIA is pretty much the only way to go for GPU-based HPC in the datacenter, it works extremely well. On the desktop/client side the loadable kernel module can be automatically recompiled via DKMS when the kernel is updated and the ABI changes.
Re: (Score:2)
And the second problem is that you cannot open your driver to the general public if you have proprietary code in it, or code covered by commercial agreements between your company and other companies and where almost certainly your company has paid a lot of money to be able to use this code. I won't even
Re: (Score:2)
I know this is Slashdot, and nobody bothers with reading anything or keeping up on current status of things before spouting off, but you do know that Nvidia open-sourced their Linux driver last week [github.com], right?
The fact that repo exists, as well as AMD and Intel GPU driver repos, and they are public basically shoots your argument in the testicles.
Re: (Score:2)
And I suspect that you also don't know how to interpret what you read, since you didn't realize that the driver that nVidia made available, although in fact more "open" than the previous ones, still depends on a closed binary provided by nVidia to work. For me personally it's not a problem, but the free source folks consider that this isn't really open source yet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well considering that Nvidia just open-sourced the core of their drivers [nvidia.com], it's a lot less hard than it used to be. Or, at least, will have much tighter integration in the next kernel version as it was probably too late for this one.
I'm almost disappointed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You must have screened put this AC comment [slashdot.org] that complained about the name.
Re: (Score:2)
Or this one:
https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody's freaking out about the term "DRM" this time!
Why would they? The term dates back to before the millennium bug.
Perhaps I'm an outlier but (Score:1)
Why is driver code in the kernel? (Score:2)
Shouldn't that stuff be orthogonal to the kernel?