Linux kernel

Headlines · 6

1. 20h
   Modal details the fast filesystem stack behind its VM Sandboxes

   Modal published a technical post on how it evolved the filesystem stack underpinning its VM Sandboxes. Its first approach routed guest VMs through virtio-fs on top of ImageFS, inheriting lazy loading and sub-second cold starts but making metadata operations very slow: a recursive chown went from four seconds to over a minute, pnpm install and bun install ran about three times slower, and ripgrep performance dropped sharply. Modal then moved to virtio-blk with ext4 inside the guest plus a new host daemon, ImageFS-blk, which writes ext4 metadata itself and serves blocks on demand; the post says a chown fell from about 99 microseconds over virtio-fs to about 2.1 microseconds.

   Modal Blog · 🔥 6
2. 2d
   Linux kernel to drop Assisted-by tag requiring disclosure of AI tool use

   Linux kernel maintainers reached consensus at the Maintainers Summit to deprecate the “Assisted-by” tag, which since January had asked contributors using “any sort of advanced coding tool” to declare it in commit messages, and to remove the documentation requiring it. The patch was proposed on 9 October by kernel developer and Nvidia engineer Sasha Levin and drew more than 50 replies; Red Hat's Jeff Layton argued the tag is unevenly followed and “basically serves as free advertising for proprietary LLM companies.” Laurent Pinchart objected to removing it without a replacement disclosure mechanism, while Linus Torvalds called such mandatory rules “utterly stupid” in a 13 October mailing-list reply, saying what matters is whether submitters understand their own code. The change is not yet in effect, and developers are still expected to review their code, follow licensing rules and sign off the DCO.

   科技新报 · 🔥 7
3. 4d
   Linus Torvalds posts first LLM-assisted Linux kernel patch series, ~3x read throughput

   Linus Torvalds has pushed an experimental branch named noref-filemap-read-with-llm to his Linux kernel repository, his first patch series developed with a large language model, targeting contention in the page cache when several threads make small reads from the same file. In the submission he states that the core code, test programs, review and the first draft of the text were done with Anthropic's Claude Code under his direction; per the benchmarks he posted, on a 4-core, 8-thread Core i7-8565U laptop, 8-thread 16-byte pread() throughput rose from roughly 9.9–10.4 million to 30–33 million reads per second and kernel cycles per read fell from about 2,950 to 725, while single-thread reads improved only slightly, from about 452–454 to 408–409 cycles. The approach defers memory reclamation until an RCU grace period elapses so the fast path avoids updating a shared refcount, but Torvalds calls reclamation the least-solved part of the series, reads targeting an unmapped user page add a failed exception on the new path, and the branch remains outside mainline, with LWN reporting reviewers have already flagged a race condition.

   ZDNET AI · 🔥 23
4. 6d
   Qualcomm engineer questions whether Linux LTS distros are obsolete in the AI era

   Khem Raj, an engineer at Qualcomm, argued this week at the Linux Plumbers Conference in Prague that Linux Long Term Support (LTS) distributions may no longer fit the generative-AI era. According to IT之家's report on Phoronix's coverage, he said AI coding agents are accelerating patch submissions and bug reports to the Linux kernel and related open-source projects, putting heavy strain on open-source maintainers and distribution vendors alike. Raj listed benefits of rolling releases — less patch backporting, smaller divergence from upstream and faster security fixes — while noting challenges around certification and qualification, and suggested rethinking the usefulness of LTS, particularly for embedded distributions and community-maintained versions, possibly with generative AI tools helping maintain LTS releases.

   IT之家 AI · 🔥 0
5. Oct 9
   Torvalds pushes Claude Code-written patches to Linux kernel repo

   Linux creator Linus Torvalds has pushed a branch called "noref-filemap-read-with-llm" to his personal Git repository, containing patches that reduce reference-count contention in the page cache when multiple threads read small chunks of the same file. In the patch notes he says the code, test programs, review and the first draft of the cover letter were produced by an LLM coding assistant (Claude Code) under his direction, with performance measurements run on his own machine. A separate "assoc-array-fixes" tag covers readability refactoring of the kernel's associative array code, started after developer Nils Ollrogge reported a bug; testing confirmed that bug and uncovered three further defects traced back to the library's introduction to the kernel in 2013. Neither series has been merged into mainline yet, and both could move forward during the Linux 7.4 merge window.

   ZDNET AI · 🔥 0
6. Oct 9
   Torvalds calls AI a 'gateway drug' to programming, cautions on serious work

   Speaking at the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit in Prague, Linux kernel founder Linus Torvalds called AI an interesting and useful tool — a "gateway drug" into programming that lowers the bar for newcomers who might otherwise feel ashamed of early efforts. He cautioned, however, that using AI for "real and important" work requires knowing exactly what you want and what the outcome should be, suggesting people start with toy or personal projects. He also said the flood of AI-generated vulnerability reports and patches has made the security mailing list "almost entirely unmanageable" and is stressing maintainers, with Linux partly answering an AI deluge of patches with its own AI-driven patch review.

   TechRadar · 🔥 0

Experience and discussion from the community

Share my Linux kernel experienceAsk about Linux kernel