Looking forward to 7.1 rolling out soon.
Moving really old and unused code out of the kernel just to get less AI-assisted bug reports is IMO one of the best consequence ever of AI.
I love it.
We should start trimming the fat out of everything.
Obviously, the parent is /s, but when I read this, I thought Linux was removing exploit paths that exercise rarely-used features.
On phone OSes at least, quirky rare formats and features are (were?) a common source of exploitable bugs.
There’s presumably plenty of code bloat in the kernel, and while no human would ever scan for bugs in a corner of the kernel that hasn’t been used or touched in decades, AI 100% will. And while those bug reports might be useless as bug reports, they seem promising as “why is this code even here?” flags.
blog post (pretty sure I've seen it on HN before) on the topic:
! Title: Hide Anubis Image
*/.within.website/x/cmd/anubis/static/img/*.webp$image
(c) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46310941> grown adult men
On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog. I won’t look for original threads, but in general assumptions about posters age and gender are just that - assumptions. If they were female posters, would you feel differently??
> Telling on themselves, perhaps?
Get rid of this sentence. By itself it will be the cause of disengagement and downvotes.
> this is a hill people will die on.
Getting an account banned in no way equates to death. Oh no, lost my karma!
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history
7.0 is already present in forky (current testing), and available as a backport for trixie (current stable):
* https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=linux-image-amd6...
* https://packages.debian.org/trixie-backports/linux-image-amd...
The default kernel for trixie/stable is 6.12, initially released in November 2024, and officially supported upstream until December 2028.
I wish more people would consider Debian for their devices. It is a very stable system, which I appreciate, and, unlike Ubuntu, it was really an "it just works" experience, without any of the friction points that smaller distros have. I installed Debian Trixie on a very recent device (granted, all AMD for compatibility) when Trixie was still the Testing version, and all the necessary drivers were present.
Now if only I could figure out how to build packages and contribute back to Debian... Also if only AMD could get their NPU support for Linux figured out...
I get that you mean that AMD is more compatible than... what? Intel? Arm?
I remember that I attempted to install Debian on my laptop in 2009. It was ugly. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 and it was a totally different and much nicer experience. Because of that I've been on Ubuntu until they started pushing snaps very aggressively. I live booted Debian 11 and realized that its UI was exactly the same. I don't know when it happened during that dozen of years but there wasn't anymore a reason to stick to Ubuntu. I installed Debian 11 and got a faster machine with less background processes. I'm on Debian 13 now. I've been told that KDE is much better than what I attempted to use in 2014 so maybe I could give it a try, but it's unclear to me what I have to gain.
Snap applications are still not “equal enough” to installed apps.
They have gotten better, but it’s not seamless and when you get burned it’s 2 hours debugging. Each time.
An app I use/help maintain regularly gets bug reports about sandboxed behavior. It’s understandable but the easiest fix is to install an unsandboxed version.
I personally have some extra steps in my workflow for printing from a snap application because it doesn’t just work and I don’t want to spend the hours needed to debug it.
So kubuntu it was, and has been ever since. I'm currently looking into whether I should change to something else - as I've started growing tired of Ubuntu/Kubuntu after some 20 odd years.
I came to Ubuntu because Wine worked on it with no effort. Yes, this was a long time ago. I have certainly cursed some of their changes since then, but I don’t want to spend my time doing yet another sysadmin job, so the less I change the better.
I’d rather flip the question back on you, how is Ubuntu better than, say, Rocky? If you say “upgrading is easier” I’ll chuckle for the rest of the day.
If you don't actually need all the drivers, you can use "make localmodconfig" to substantially reduce that. My local kernels build in 90 seconds on a 32-thread desktop machine :)
The kernel is a lot more stable than people think: I run the daily linux-next on my Debian stable gaming PC to look for bugs, and I don't find very many.
IIRC, Debian has a command called "make-kpkg" which does nearly all the work for you, ending up with a installable package which works identically to the standard Debian kernel packages.
The resources behind your post likely have a larger carbon footprint.
The last time I worried over which kernel was used in Debian Stable was... never. If I want a more recent kernel I run Debian unstable (Sid) which currently is at 7.0.12 (the current 'stable' kernel where 7.1 is 'mainline') but on my servers Stable (currently 'Trixie') does just fine with its 6.17.3 kernel. Debian 'Forky' will be released somewhere in 2027 with either a 7.0.x or 7.1.x kernel depending on how things go. The current kernel used in 'testing' (which will become 'stable' on the next release) is 7.0.10.
To do so, add the sources for trixie-backports and unstable, and add the following configuration (e.g. /etc/apt/preferences.d/trixie-sid-pin) so that the system knows which sources your prefer:
# Default to trixie
Package: *
Pin: release n=trixie
Pin-Priority: 990
# Very low priority for sid
Package: *
Pin: release n=unstable
Pin-Priority: 100
# Give backports medium priority
Package: *
Pin: release n=trixie-backports
Pin-Priority: 500
Now the system can access the latest kernel from unstable (and backports), while keeping everything else on stable: # apt policy linux-image-amd64
linux-image-amd64:
Installed: 7.0.12-1
Candidate: 7.0.12-2
Version table:
7.0.12-2 500
500 http://deb.debian.org/debian unstable/main amd64 Packages
*** 7.0.12-1 100
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
7.0.10-1~bpo13+1 500
500 http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie-backports/main amd64 Packages
6.12.90-2 500
500 http://security.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security/main amd64 Packages
6.12.86-1 990
990 http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie/main amd64 Packages
I believe the kernel in backports gets updated only after it is live in unstable for at least a week, which lately still feels like forever.Which is just as well, because that's not generally a good idea unless you really know what you're doing:
https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian#Don.27t_make_a_Frank...
Granted, the kernel is probably the best thing to do it with, on account of their aggressive stance on compatibility and the narrowness of impact (no .so files in play).
It was briefly a little annoying to deal with wireguard. But it was only a bit annoying, and then they updated. That's the only time I recall specifically caring.
Did I miss something about this or is it just another number?
Exciting and risky things are always under flags, so if you really care you just build, configure, and bench your own kernel+system.
So, a number.
But 7.1 new features can still be exciting.