KERNEL WATCH
Jon Masters summarises the latest happenings in the Linux kernel, so that you don’t have to.
This month happens to align nicely between kernel cycles. As a consequence, since last issue Linus Torvalds has announced both the final GA release of Linux 5.13, as well as the first Release Candidate (RC1) for what will become Linux 5.14. We largely covered the 5.13 release in last month’s issue, which includes initial support for Apple M1 processor devices among its many other features. That release came just in time for the US 4 July holiday, and perhaps as a consequence the beginning of the 5.14 cycle was a little quieter.
The same cannot be said of the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), where there has been quite some debate lately about the latest attempt to merge support for the Rust programming language into the kernel. Proponents point to the many security issues with C over the years, as well as the popularity of the new language to attract additional developers. But at the same time, attempts to merge support (which has been formally requested) seem premature – not the least because few practical users exist yet. A number of prominent developers have called for a real-world driver to be (re)written in Rust to demonstrate.