- Add opt-in Apple Time Machine support
Implement the AAPL negotiation and related Finder, stream,
COPYCHUNK, sparse-file, CHANGE_NOTIFY, and RPC compatibility
required for Time Machine shares, allowing macOS backupd to use
ksmbd for backups
I'm not sure if ksmbd still makes all that much sense. A user-space daemon can saturate almost any network link using a single CPU core. And the attack surface... if you control ksmbd, you immediately own the machine.
teekert 7 hours ago [-]
Over my life I have found that with any Apple technology it may work great with anything outside Apple's control... Until it doesn't, usually out of nowhere.
My father is mostly on Apple and tries to use his iPad as a PC, ie with files and "the filesystem", he tries to get out of using extra iCloud for pictures (using Proton, or he asks me about Immich, or he wants to use an external HDD, or use Synology Photos and backup). He's mostly on the iPad + keyboard because it's a nicely managed device update-wise and "what I can install"-wise, virus-wise.
But I recent told him: Just give up. Buy (rent!) the storage, you are too depended on me, there is always something with the non-Apple solutions. Yes, your iTunes library is a mess on the filesystem, just don't look at it through anything else than "Music". Yes, Proton Drive eats 400 GB of your iPad storage now, I don't know how to trim that regularly. I'm sorry, it's either Linux and I can help set some things up, or full Apple. Choose. His current mixed, "trying to get best-of-both-worlds", approach is just pure unexpected pain, every time again.
Edit: I also have an iPad, it does work for me, but where my father is trying to use his iPad as a central, primary device (the hub), for me it is a client (spoke) of my own infra. Apps get access to information and I never use Apple services for anything. So indeed, Immich, Proton, Home Assistant, government and banking apps, etc. My iPad is throw-away: If it dies, it dies... I buy a new one, log into all (self-hosed) services and I'm 100% back up and running. Doing the same for my father is also pain, because his Home Assistant will have issues, or his Immich instance, and it's real work to fix, and he won't tell me for months if it does not work and work piles up. So, I tell him to surrender to Apple... It die a little inside.
yuck39 1 hours ago [-]
> Yes, Proton Drive eats 400 GB of your iPad storage now, I don't know how to trim that regularly.
I love Proton services and have been a subscriber for years. I do not understand what is going on with this. I have proton drive on my iPhone, I manually open it monthly to let my photos sync. I pay for the storage on proton drive to _save_ space locally, but whenever I sync to proton drive the storage space used locally by the app is almost equal to a local photo library! Yes I can delete the app, re-install it monthly to sync my library once, but it quickly balloons to dozens of gigabytes when I start to sync my local photos.
Can anyone at proton explain what is going on here?
msm_ 5 hours ago [-]
>My father (...) tries to use his iPad as a PC (...) He's mostly on the iPad + keyboard because it's a nicely managed device update-wise and "what I can install"-wise, virus-wise. (...) But I recent told him: Just give up
Since he apparently wants a PC, isn't the logical conclusion the opposite? "Just give up. Buy a Windows/Linux laptop, you are too dependent on Apple, there is always something with the Apple solutions."
teekert 5 hours ago [-]
We made the call to go Apple years and years ago when he was always fighting viruses and virus scanners on Windows. His Macbook was still (hardware-wise) perfectly functional, but does not receive security updates anymore, so he went iPad. Indeed there are more problems than expected. I expected even less IT support from me was needed. Instead he now complains about the lack of control (which I am certainly ok with btw, the complaining I mean.)
The current plan is to put Ubuntu on the Macbook, not sure what to do with the iPad but make it less "primary computer" will be one of the policies to implement indeed. Maybe he will be happy with an external disk and f-spot, and his music nicely sorted into files. Then some generic backup solution to a Synology NAS or something...
windowsrookie 3 hours ago [-]
Have you considered open core legacy? I am running macOS Sonoma nearly perfectly on a 2010 iMac.
ptman 3 hours ago [-]
Viruses were a problem and you're suggesting an old unpatched system.
2 hours ago [-]
brnt 4 hours ago [-]
Macbooks are great devices, but Linux is a great "fire-and-forget" OS for situations tech-illiterate loved ones. I've done it many times, with much succes and satisfaction (on both ends) without barely any aftercare. All you really need to do is teach them to install those updates and install a major upgrade every few years (or not, Ubuntu will run fine for a decade).
pjmlp 2 hours ago [-]
I beg to differ, I tried that approach a few years back with my folks, only to discover on my next visit a few months later that they went down to a local PC store and got Windows re-installed.
They never managed to get it working for their liking, it wasn't able to run the stuff their friends used to talk about or share via CD/DVD/USB sticks, and they did not wanted to bother me with "dumb" questions.
So I rather that they have Windows, go down to the local PC store when something isn't working as it should.
teekert 1 hours ago [-]
I do the same with acquaintances whom I sometimes sell secondhand gear, I don't want to do any support so they get Windows. For my father it's different, I can do support, plus he really appreciates and is willing to make sacrifices for, the privacy angle.
brnt 2 hours ago [-]
Of course you need to help them to alternatives, if they are not that tech-illiterate that they have very specific wishes for software.
It's been a while since I experienced people sharing software one discs by the way, it's been a while since I saw discs at all ;)
Alexander-Barth 3 hours ago [-]
I can confirm. That is basically what I did for my father-in-law. The laptop is quite ancient by now (more than 10 years old) but still good enough for running current version of Ubuntu.
jorvi 3 hours ago [-]
Linux is the opposite of fire-and-forget. Eventually a papercut always turns up that will require the terminal.
macOS also has (well, had) extreme UI stability. You could transport someone from 2003 used to Mac OS X 10.0 two decades into the future and they would be able to use macOS Ventura (and all previous versions) purely by muscle memory. Good luck doing that with Windows and Linux with their constant UI churn.
Interestingly enough, by iOS-ifying macOS, they've made it much easier to shift someone using an iPhone from Windows to macOS, because they already recognize many of the UI and UX paradigms.
orwin 2 hours ago [-]
Linux is not fire and forget for people who use technology without really understanding it, but for people who don't use technology and just need to check their mails and connect to government website to pay their taxes, it is the best.
Once it's configured for these kind of people, it's really fire and forget, and it was already that in 2016.
fullstop 1 hours ago [-]
My daughter has Kinoite set up for her boyfriend's grandparents. It's immutable, so there's not much damage they can do without admin access, and she made it look much like Windows. They were already doing everything with Firefox as it was, so it wasn't a huge transition for them.
She did go back to fix things because the grandma managed to delete the printer, and she said that the downloads folder was full of exe files with sketchy names.
I'm with you on the macOS stability in the past. The thing that gets me is that Windows somehow gets a pass in this regard, but there have been some pretty big changes over the years.
teekert 3 hours ago [-]
When did you last evaluate a system like Ubuntu? I'd have agreed with you 10, perhaps 5 years ago. But things have changed.
pjmlp 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, they are always changing, I know Linux since 1996, use it as part of my work, last time I used a system like Ubuntu was last year, where it failed to work with a GIGABYTE BRIX Mini-PC UEFI firmware when starting from internal SSD, which I eventually gave up after several weeks trying various workarounds.
torstenvl 2 hours ago [-]
That's the point.
brnt 2 hours ago [-]
> Linux is the opposite of fire-and-forget. Eventually a papercut always turns up that will require the terminal.
When I say it's been fire-and-forget, I mean that for at least two decades.
If papercuts turn up, you are running the wrong distro or secretly a power user that naturally causes problems for themselves every now and then. This won't happen with normal users on a long term stable distro.
amelius 7 hours ago [-]
I think AI might change that. Reverse engineering has just become a lot simpler and more reliable.
the_hoffa 5 hours ago [-]
I suspect what we might actually see in that regard is something similar to Minecraft (the Java based one): people were regularly modding it because it was Java based and easy to decomp and know where to inject a mod.
So the Minecraft crew would regularly release updates and obfuscate the code again - most updates were to fix issues/add features, but some were purely for obfuscation. So if you wanted your mod to work it meant not playing any other version.
I'm guessing we'll start seeing more regular updates from software makers; will the updates be fixing bugs or adding features - sure - but I'm guessing that quite a few updates will be simply to obfuscate the code and change addresses around so that any mods that worked before, won't in the new version. Sure an LLM could just decomp it again, but I figure most people won't want to spend the tokens/time it takes for the LLM to actually do the work on that new decomp effort. And with the fact that most people have "auto-update" defaulted to on, I'm foreseeing that apps will get auto-updated likely daily in the near future to combat this.
Years ago, someone once told me "I hope you live in interesting times" ... I don't think this is what they had in mind.
joshspankit 3 hours ago [-]
This already happens and has been happening for a while, especially in the Apple ecosystem. I can’t even count the number of apps that did something novel, got popular, had that novelty restricted by some update, then got “replaced” by an Apple app/feature as though they never existed.
teekert 6 hours ago [-]
Apple will also use AI to make it at least as painful and as unexpected as before. It's their business model (I have come to believe).
Edit: But good point of course, but I believe it will remain cat and mouse, no idea how Apple internally sees it, whether they really don't care, or actively break stuff (break your ** face tonight).
saagarjha 5 hours ago [-]
Reverse engineering is not a magic wand you can wave on everything and expect something good to come out of it. You need to actually know what you are trying to get out of it.
amelius 5 hours ago [-]
Computers are not a magic wand that will solve all your problems. Let's go back to the abacus!
mort96 2 hours ago [-]
Your comment, ending in "let's go back to the abacus", only makes sense if "let's stop doing reverse engineering" is a message which can be read out from your parent comment. Is it?
amelius 2 hours ago [-]
No it's "let's do it the oldfashioned way".
mort96 57 minutes ago [-]
No, their argument was not "we should do reverse engineering exclusively by hand". Their argument was that automating reverse engineering to some degree doesn't automatically fix the issue.
saagarjha 4 hours ago [-]
Suggesting that there are these things called computers that are now a lot simpler and reliable would be met with derision because it is a valueless comment
makeitdouble 5 hours ago [-]
The issue is rarely to have some working setup at a given time, IMHO the real fight is to keep it working thought the updates and ecosystem changes.
That was the same issue with jailbreaking, it gave a lot of freedom, while also being a PITA to deal with at every security fix and system change. Many jailbreakers came to parent's conclusion and just "give up".
buybackoff 6 hours ago [-]
Time Machine support has been working on TrueNAS Scale, just via one checkbox on a SMB share config, for years. I thought it was just something in a share config that was always there. Now I wonder how did they do it.
nign 4 hours ago [-]
This never really worked for me. It would start a backup, very slowly send over a tiny amount of preliminary data, and then fail after several hours. I'm hoping the in-kernel support will get this working for me, but who knows...
e12e 5 hours ago [-]
I think this is in-kernel smb?
philjohn 5 hours ago [-]
Correct. TrueNAS uses Samba, which has supported this for a while. On TrueNAS it also creates a ZFS snapshot after a successful TimeMachine backup which is really nice for the times MacOS decides to corrupt a TimeMachine volume for no apparent reason.
crossroadsguy 6 hours ago [-]
This really makes me sad. They devoted time and effort to support something as locked and as broken as Apple Time Machine. That thing is a bad choice even within a 100% Apple ecosystem.
spwa4 6 hours ago [-]
Wait ... the linux kernel has an SMB server?
AshamedCaptain 5 hours ago [-]
And basically only used by those allergic to Samba's GPLv3.
tosti 2 hours ago [-]
Is that the reason? In the past, a kernel webserver called tux (IIRC) was removed because it was just rediculous and the performance gap was considered a solved problem, not worth keeping an in-kernel server around.
Razengan 2 hours ago [-]
> Still sucks that it has to be reverse-engineered
With AI and stuff like rea.tools does that really matter anymore?
Let's just accept that this is the new norm: Giant companies who had over 20 years to open their shit up, chose to be ass about it and refused, and now we can just take it. Screw them.
nine_k 2 hours ago [-]
It does. It's the difference between "be my guest" and "catch me if you can". Currently we have better luck catching, but there's no promise that it should stay this way.
Hamuko 7 hours ago [-]
Gotta say, using SMB with Apple clients is a massive pain in the ass. I imagine a large part of that is just Microsoft cruft, leaving you to deal with limitations designed around Windows. And you don't really have another option after Apple deprecated AFP.
alt227 4 hours ago [-]
Apple refuse to pay Microsoft the license for their SMB stack and have dropped open source Samba due to license conflicts with GPL, and so have developed their own implementation (SMBX). This is the reason it is so buggy, and there are loads of articles and posts all over the internet about it. Heres one example from the top of google.
Sometimes I wish Apple had gone-head-to-head with Samba and forked v4 and kept it GPL-2 - they might have had enough power to force the issue.
lostmsu 4 hours ago [-]
I feel the same about Linux clients. I wish there was some focus
there.
raverbashing 7 hours ago [-]
Wait so Time Machine works over SMB? Huh
tonyedgecombe 7 hours ago [-]
Works might be a stretch. Every time I hear someone complaining about Time Machine it turns out they are trying to do it over SMB.
TheFuzzball 5 hours ago [-]
Apple have dropped support for AFP, so SMB is the only game in town.
alt227 4 hours ago [-]
What are the alternatives to SMB for time machine?
tonyedgecombe 4 hours ago [-]
A locally attached drive.
alt227 4 hours ago [-]
Is this the recommended way to use time machine then, as opposed to over a network?
throw0101a 3 hours ago [-]
> If you have a USB drive or other external storage device, you can use Time Machine to automatically back up your files, including apps, music, photos, email, and documents.
The "3-2-1" strategy is even possible if you rotate drives between locations:
> For extra security and convenience, you can back up to multiple disks. If you work in two locations, you may want to keep backup disks in both places.
I’ve been using Time Machine with my synology nas for ~5 years. Works pretty well. I’d say once every 2 months it looses connection but seems to re-connect itself after a few minutes.
reftel 4 hours ago [-]
Since macOS 26, it’s SMB only. Time Machine over AFP is no longer supported.
egorfine 6 hours ago [-]
For like 15 years.
hanumseous 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ziiinq 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
INTPenis 6 hours ago [-]
> This release is a record-breaker on all fronts; it brought in 18,765 non-merge commits from 3,021 developers, 807 of whom were first-time kernel developers.
I'm reading that as many new AI assisted code patches. Not everyone does an obviously bad job at submitting AI assisted code.
Broadly it says: you can use AI as much as you like. You have to disclose use of AI. You, as a person, not the AI, are responsible for the quality of Linux kernel submissions.
n4r9 5 hours ago [-]
> You, as a person, not the AI, are responsible for the quality
As someone who doesn't know much about linux kernel work: what does being responsible for the submission look like in practice? Are you expected to find fixes if your change causes unanticipated issues?
palata 4 hours ago [-]
I think what it means is "we will judge you based on the code you submit, we don't care if it comes from an AI". Also probably "we will judge you if you obviously don't understand the code you submit".
At least that's how I do it. When someone offers a patch to an open source project, I don't really care if that person has a PhD, or if that person does this in their free time, or if that patch is actually the result of a whole team working together. I judge the patch based on the value it brings to me as a maintainer.
Obviously the code has to be good, but also the interaction with whoever offers the patch has to be smooth: if I have a question, if I need them to confirm/change/test/elaborate on something, I need that to work.
If I feel like I would be faster doing the work myself AND this author is not putting effort into it (e.g. they just copy-paste an AI), I will not review that work. Possibly I will distrust that author. If too many contributions end up wasting my time, I will start limiting the contributions to people I know/trust, etc.
In terms of maintenance, I don't see a difference between getting a contribution from a stranger or from a stranger using an AI.
In terms of philosophy, that's obviously different: One may not want to accept contributions from people using AI because they think that AI is bad for society, for instance. And I would totally understand that. But if the stance (and it seems to be Linus' stance) is that a patch is only judged based on its technical merit, then I don't see why AI-in-the-loop would be an issue.
Verdex 18 minutes ago [-]
This was my take on it as well. Which in many ways makes a lot of sense and is pragmatic.
The thing which I think is going to be a very sore lesson for everyone at some point is that if anyone uses AI it becomes a burden for everyone. Even in projects that reject all AI usage.
What I can do is create 50 personas that all contribute patches. 40 of them get called out and are distrusted, but 10 make it through. I can give more focus on those 10 to ensure their trust level increases. Then slowly have them all come together to shepard some subsystem where I'm going to be the only real person involved and can sign off on my own work in a that looks like I have oversight from the outside.
In the past this was possible but took a very high cost. You need a bunch of competent software engineers who you can trust not to blab their secret mission. Today anyone can give it a try.
RunSet 60 minutes ago [-]
> In terms of maintenance, I don't see a difference between getting a contribution from a stranger or from a stranger using an AI.
Perhaps not in terms of maintenance. In terms of provenance there is a significant difference between "I wrote this." and "I found this."
jonathanlydall 5 hours ago [-]
I've never been involved with Linux kernel work, but in terms of the "You, as a person, not the AI, are responsible for the quality" policy, this to me is a just an "obvious" policy that should be applied to any non-vibe-coded software.
It's just another way of saying, you can't have AI submit things on its own and you can't "blame" AI for anything you submit, you're expected to understand and be able to explain anything you're putting forward, if there is an issue with your submission, doesn't matter at all if you go back to AI to address it, so long as all issues are properly addressed.
The code is either of sufficient quality, or it's not, doesn't matter whether you or AI wrote it, it's your name on it, you're responsible for it and its your reputation on the line.
sejje 1 hours ago [-]
> should be applied to any non-vibe-coded software
Should be applied to anything someone is releasing without big disclosures.
At least until a few months from now when it will be clear that human code is the weak point.
palata 4 hours ago [-]
I agree, I was writing something along those lines but with more words (which is not a good thing) :-).
giancarlostoro 58 minutes ago [-]
Don't forget having Linus Torvalds ridicule you in front of the entire world. That alone is reason to be vigilant that your code submitted isn't hot garbage.
gwd 4 hours ago [-]
Basically, you can't just post slop and then say, "Oh, sorry, the AI did that." If the comments are too wordy, or the patch is unnecessary or poorly written or contains errors or doesn't follow the style guide, you submitted it, so that's on you. If you get in the habit of posting bad patches, people may start ignoring you.
machomaster 5 hours ago [-]
The docs have not been properly updated to reflect the changes. Linux developers voted to stop requiring "Assisted-by" attribution.
corbet 16 minutes ago [-]
The documentation update has been applied, you'll see it in linux-next; it should move to the mainline in the next few days.
pbhjpbhj 3 hours ago [-]
Surprised by that. I expected more openness.
How long until we get "all FOSS code is made by AI and so it's not copyrighted" arguments when using code in unlicensed ways?
It also hides what would be a great signal on which ML models to use to get the best quality code. Like, wouldn't the community like to know which models made the code with the least bugs?
wang_li 20 minutes ago [-]
Except writing patches to an existing project creates a derivative work, and the original copyright still applies to the project, even though your individual changes are owned by you.
(This is why fan made videos using copyrighted characters can be taken down.)
AlfeG 3 hours ago [-]
Nowadays it's more correct to require commit be signed by AI - with Assisted-by: Human row...
shakna 4 hours ago [-]
Voted to be removed attribution in the last meeting [0], but the patch thread is a bit controversial and ongoing at the moment. [1]
That sounds reasonable.
I would even go one step further and drop requirements to disclose AI use.
I think the person submitting the work should be fully responsible for what they submit and is more than enough.
If you have a karma system for contributors, you get a pretty good idea of who does a good job.p
wang_li 16 minutes ago [-]
100% of AI use should have to be disclosed in all cases, not just software. A person using an AI is foregoing responsibility from the get go by using an AI to do things that they can't personally do. What would it even mean for them to be responsible if they submit a patch to a project written by an AI as their own work? Such a person submitting a patch they don't understand that is rejected is in exactly the same place as if they had never submitted a patch. They have nothing to lose.
LtWorf 5 hours ago [-]
In their last meeting they've agreed to give up on the disclosing part.
eru 5 hours ago [-]
Basically, they expect everyone to always use AI all the time anyway.
palata 4 hours ago [-]
Or they don't care whether the code was produced with vim, VScode with an autocomplete tool or AI; they will judge the code based on the quality of the code and the quality of the interaction with whoever submits it?
Nothing says you have to use AI. Just like nothing says you have to use a computer. You could have someone print the code for you, write your patch with a pencil on paper, get a pigeon to send your patch to someone who can then submit it, and it would be judge in the same manner. Granted, it's probably more efficient to use a computer.
LtWorf 2 hours ago [-]
> Nothing says you have to use AI.
Except your employer, usually.
palata 1 hours ago [-]
Well if my employer was willing to pay me to contribute to open source projects like Linux, under the condition that I used AI, I would gladly do it :-).
1 hours ago [-]
MisterMunchkin 6 hours ago [-]
On the one hand it is concerning, on the other hand… I was getting quite worried the iPad generation was going to be incapable of developing operating systems. If AI is now capable of maintaining it, that will save us from collapse.
pbhjpbhj 3 hours ago [-]
As long as "the iPad generation" can write and maintain ML tools? Because otherwise all software gets locked behind the tools which as they grow more complex will require more access to more resources to produce.
Doesn't this just end up with the tech billionaires being the only ones who can make software. Will they decide to allow their models to maintain/create FOSS? Seems unlikely.
I wouldn't call it fast, these are several years old and no GPU, Thunderbolt, etc. support still. It's steady, but not fast.
palata 4 hours ago [-]
If I was to do it myself, it would take centuries. I guess it's a matter of perspective :-).
vbezhenar 3 hours ago [-]
And if Apple did it themselves, like Intel or AMD do, it would be released at the same time as macOS.
pmontra 2 hours ago [-]
Intel and AMD sell to customers that build computers running Linux, especially servers. Apple sells to itself, to build computers that run their own OS.
palata 1 hours ago [-]
Sure. But is that a reason to complain? If Apple made bikes, they may be nice bikes. But I don't see a reason to complain about Apple not making bikes. I mean... they don't have to, do they?
Would be cool if Apple decided to support Linux, of course. But why would they? If it was profitable for them, they would do it. Instead they think it's more profitable to enshittify their products. That's life.
Now people who reverse engineer that to help us run Linux on Apple hardware... I would guess they don't make a fortune doing that, and I find it impressive work.
sejje 1 hours ago [-]
> I don't see a reason to complain about Apple not making bikes. I mean... they don't have to, do they?
This analogy is really tortured. Apple doesn't make bikes.
But they do make software, and hardware. People want to use them however they choose.
This is more like a bike company choosing a proprietary air valve that only lets you inflate your bike tires with their own company-branded air pump, even though there's been other air pumps for many decades before them, and their design isn't particularly better than the others. And you say "well they don't have to design an air valve adapter to use other air pumps" and -- yeah, that's true. But people are gonna bitch.
palata 3 minutes ago [-]
> and -- yeah, that's true.
So we agree :-). Of course I would like it if Apple was making my life better. I just find it naive to consider that companies are anything other than profit-maximizing machines. If they happen to do something you like, it's because it is profitable for them. They couldn't care less about you.
> But people are gonna bitch.
Whatever you do, people are gonna bitch. Again it would be a bit naive to think that if you do "your best", or if you do "what's right", or if you "genuinely try", then everybody will appreciate. There will always be enough people bitching, of that I am certain.
emacdona 4 hours ago [-]
I have this dream that previous gen M chips will be worth more than current gen M chips b/c people want to run local inference on Apple silicon... but they want to use Linux and not OS X.
wang_li 8 minutes ago [-]
I'm curious on why you think that, say, an M2 running linux will ever be a better choice for AI workloads than an M5 Pro running MacOS? What is it that you think is in the hardware that you'd be able to unlock with linux but isn't exposed by MacOS?
nubinetwork 4 hours ago [-]
Just because you have a device tree file, doesn't mean its correct, or even accurate.
e12e 5 hours ago [-]
On the other hand - I just had to send my Asus vivobook s15 to repair, because Linux (most likely) fried the wifi chip.
Pretty disappointed in Qualcomm's promise of upstream support for Snapdragon X Elite turning out to be: lol, not actually so you can run Linux on devices, only so you can maybe boot without most devices working...
Hope things will keep improving despite lack of help from vendors.
pmontra 2 hours ago [-]
Not one of the downvoters. How would the kernel fry the Wi-Fi chip?
sirnicolaz 7 hours ago [-]
> This release is a record-breaker on all fronts; it brought in 18,765 non-merge commits from 3,021 developers, 807 of whom were first-time kernel developers.
hopefully without kernel-slops :P good job everyone btw!
sedan_baklazhan 5 hours ago [-]
BTW, here we are: LOC metric everyone made fun of has suddenly became commit count metric.
Features? Bugfixes? What? Look how many commits we've got!
machomaster 5 hours ago [-]
1. They weren't counting LOC though, but commits. It's a totally different metric.
2. This type of stat was always being shared with each new release, giving a general indication of the size of changes. They did not started posting it all of a sudden due to AI.
izacus 4 hours ago [-]
> 1. They weren't counting LOC though, but commits. It's a totally different metric.
Is this satire? :D
literallyroy 2 hours ago [-]
I think in Linux world commits usually mean something which isn’t always the case at random company X. A commit being a meaningful change where number of lines doesn’t matter.
1 hours ago [-]
jjice 3 hours ago [-]
It felt to me like it's more of a neat fact rather than a measure of quality.
amelius 7 hours ago [-]
Is Linus still checking every commit?
bakugo 3 minutes ago [-]
Linus thinks AI is no different from a compiler, so it's likely that none of these commits are being reviewed. After all, how often do you doubt your compiler's output?
Hendrikto 6 hours ago [-]
That‘s what subsystem maintainers are for.
secondcoming 6 hours ago [-]
That's a big ask for those maintainers who are volunteers
patadura 5 hours ago [-]
Do people still think that Linux is being developed by unpaid hackers in a garage?
cromka 6 hours ago [-]
Most, if not all, are employed by different companies or Kernel.org.
Sammi 4 hours ago [-]
Linux is big business.
lexicality 6 hours ago [-]
It's a big ask to expect people to do the thing they volunteered to do and can step back from doing any time they want?
cjd8 6 hours ago [-]
Only if he finds something odd in the pull request summary.
michelsedgh 7 hours ago [-]
[dead]
colesantiago 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
LtdJorge 7 hours ago [-]
It might be written by the LLM, but I'm pretty sure Linus hasn't vibe coded it. Do you think he won't look at the output and nitpick to death?
During peer review a race condition was found in his code. Would he have spotted it himself when writing the code manually? Maybe, maybe not. He's only human, and the AI is only AI.
LiamPowell 6 hours ago [-]
I wonder if humans would have spotted this one if no one knew a LLM wrote it. Obviously it's nearly impossible to test that though.
red75prime 6 hours ago [-]
It's not necessarily a human who found this one. Coding assistants are so widespread that people don't bother mentioning them.
sedan_baklazhan 6 hours ago [-]
Such LLM defensive positions seems fun to me for some reason.
rfgplk 6 hours ago [-]
Opus/Fable/Astra/Sol are outright better than Linus.
sick_of_slop 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
aa-jv 7 hours ago [-]
I think this is yet another case where Linus is leading the pack and showing the industry how to adapt to new technology, and indeed, adopt standard best practices for its application.
I'm in the "AI is great!" optimist camp myself, which is how I felt in the very early days of "this little crappy hobbyist Linux kernel thing that'll never go anywhere important" minix-list flamewars.
Once again, Linus demonstrating that those who understand the code, own the code.
outadoc 6 hours ago [-]
"Showing the industry how to adapt to new technology", as in, don't blindly trust whatever the big probability box committed to your repo but actually perform a good code review with the same standards as human-written code?
I think this says way more about the industry being completely out of touch and less about Linus leading the pack.
aa-jv 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, usually when the flock is lost in the wilderness, its leaders need to raise their heads and lead the way. Linus is applying the same great engineering methods he's always had.
teekert 7 hours ago [-]
Please stop with the "AI assisted development" = "Vibe coding slop" narrative. It comes across as pretty dumb (sorry, I mean "uninformed") nowadays. Please experiment with LLMs, find your way (or don't, but), learn to talk about it in an informed way and don't post obviously inflammatory one liners that are essentially just "AI is bad m'kay".
There are intelligent arguments against using AI, your comment is not referring to any of them.
In short: Linus feels responsible for the quality of the Kernel, he expects the same of other devs. He does not care about the tools used to generate the code. He (or some other human) will call out submitted slop, whether LLM generated or human generated.
jillesvangurp 6 hours ago [-]
It's increasingly the other way around, actually. You are being sloppy if you don't use the tools available to you. Including AI, static code analysis, testing tools, etc. to check if your work is any good. That doesn't mean you have to surrender to the AI tools and blindly generate everything and then commit without testing or any form of validation. That would be sloppy. But then if you manually write your code and did that, that would be sloppy too. Whether you manually type in all your code or have it generated is immaterial. What matters is the work you do to ensure it all works as advertised and is fit to be merged.
The kernel developers are probably a bit further in their thinking then some developers. They've been dealing with many thousands of contributors for decades. Git was invented by Linus Torvalds specifically to deal with ensuring only the best patches make it into the kernel.
Somebody posted a video with Greg Kroah-Hartman last week or so commenting on how he's been dealing with all the AI generated security bug reports. His key point is that AI generated reports are meaningless unless they come with a suggested fix as well. If you are going to generate the report, you might as well generate the fix. And it's a lot easier for him to review if the fix fixes anything worth fixing then to piece together a fix from a lengthy report. The larger the report, the less likely it is to get any attention. If the person contributing can't articulate why the fix is needed or how it works, they just reject the change and toss it back. That strikes me as very pragmatic. Judge a change on its merits. Not on how it was created. A report without a suggested fix is relatively meaningless.
teekert 6 hours ago [-]
100%. I think there are a lot of people here on HN that are very threatened by LLMs, rightly so. I'm also afraid of my future and my day-to-day work has already changed from "loosing myself in a flow state solving technical puzzles" to "micro-managing LLMs". I don't like it, but hope I will learn to, at some point, or perhaps I find different work. I feel like I don't have a choice right now but to adapt and learn.
The answer to this issue is not to equate any code generated by LLMs to slop. It is just not true. As you say, the latest models often flag things that I would definitely miss, or they simplify my code significantly with a just-released feature. I see benefits to code quality all day from using LLMs.
I'm just saying (not to you but to comments below): Lets keep it constructive, which means: lets keep it real, as in close to truth. Yes vibe coding exists, and it has it's place (ie in prototyping?). But not in the kernel, and also not in my own line of works. LLMs do have a place there though.
MisterMunchkin 6 hours ago [-]
There’s such a breadth of slop quality. Like I’ve seen people using ChatGPT with thinking disabled, which is just garbage. But you can also use an LLM to do automated testing of your product, in a real browser window, where it actually sees how it looks via screenshots. That’s insanely useful.
And it can read all of the logs in the backend and browser simultaneously and understand what is causing issues. I’ve used that a few times and it is such a game changer for weird bugs.
colesantiago 6 hours ago [-]
no.
slop is slop.
teekert 6 hours ago [-]
Hard to argue against X = X. Just curious, are you are including human slop in your statement?
colesantiago 5 hours ago [-]
The rate at which AI introduces bugs is higher than human ones about 2x more bugs than humans.
Human slop is equally as bad, but this is not what Linus chose in this case, he chose to accept the higher risk of almost 2x as much more bugs using LLMs which lead to the introduction of LLM slop.
I don't care if it is Linus or anyone else, slop is slop human or not, with LLMs it is far worse.
ThunderSizzle 5 hours ago [-]
If the human is doing a proper workflow for the AI, I'm not so sure it's big central. Yes, AI needs to be guided strongly, and if it's not, it makes very poor choices/decisions routinely, but that's why you keep an engineer controlling the process.
I force all work to be split up into chunks, properly investigated, spiked, and planned out, and then implemented via TDD (with only system-boundary mocking permitted). It's not perfect, but I've seen regression bugs very much cut so far.
Beyond that, if it's a GUI app, I also require the TDD cycle to require GUI tests with screenshot evidence, and proper assert statements.
simianwords 4 hours ago [-]
This is the kind of argument Linus was attacking. His tone against the anti-ai commitment in Linux now makes sense.
kelnos 4 hours ago [-]
It sounds like you've defined "slop" as "anything an LLM produces". Seems unlikely you're going to get much agreement here.
colesantiago 3 hours ago [-]
Why yes, it is "slop" and Linus introduced a bug based on what the LLM produced.
He didn't even review the code. [0] Someone else did.
This is what happens when you use LLMs and this is far more irresponsible of Linus because he is vibe coding C code in the kernel.
ozgrakkurt 5 hours ago [-]
Making LLM write code is super susceptible to generating problems imo.
You know it won't be properly reviewed and understood.
Using LLMs to review code is much more useful imo but it can also cause problems due to the natural lazyness of a person.
You wouldn't want the OS you are using to be developed by a dilligent but a low IQ and mediocre skill level programmer.
I'm not saying other people can't possibly use LLMs to generate code effectively but it seems super suspicious from my experience as it triggers laziness and reluctance to put effort into understanding every piece of code.
palata 4 hours ago [-]
> You know it won't be properly reviewed and understood
Do you now?
> You wouldn't want the OS you are using to be developed by a dilligent but a low IQ and mediocre skill level programmer.
So you also know that people using LLMs to produce code are diligent but low IQ and mediocre skill?
> it triggers laziness and reluctance to put effort into understanding every piece of code.
Linus has been mostly reviewing code for what... decades? The rest of the contributors have been his LLM in some way. Would you say that he has gotten "reluctant to put effort into understanding every piece of code" he reviews?
ozgrakkurt 2 hours ago [-]
I don't think you understood what I wrote.
palata 1 hours ago [-]
If I had to guess, I would say that what you meant was that LLMs can be used to produce worse code and worse programmers, and we don't want that.
And then somehow consider that because LLMs can make bad programmers worse, it has to mean that it will make all programmers worse. And therefore Linus Torvalds using LLMs will necessarily make Linux worse.
Something like this?
teekert 2 hours ago [-]
I think they did, "You know it won't be properly reviewed and understood." This is just a lie, I review and understand LLM generated code daily. So do many others. Maybe you should be more clear?
aether781536 19 minutes ago [-]
Congrats to the kernel team! The pace of releases over the last year has been impressive. Looking forward to testing this on my machines this weekend.
It’d be interesting to see if rust pickup is improving or not.
mdspan 7 hours ago [-]
First time hearing about failfs. Does it have a niche use case or is it just for testing?
saint-evan 7 hours ago [-]
Failfs is a pretty cool pseudo-filesystem where every path lookup fails. So if yu place a statically-linked process into failfs with ONLY pre-allocated file-descriptors at process birth, close down unneeded sockets and enforce a default-deny firewall discipline, compromised applications are effectively isolated and unable to access local files or spawn shells during an exploit. An attacker can NOT move adjacently from the exploited process to other parts of the system because to do so they'll need to navigate from root and that would fail since yu set root as failfs and you've got yourself a pure, isolated data-processing pipe that can only interact via the exact file descriptors it was given!!
Unfortunately, yu can't use dynamically-linked apps anyway since failfs would break absolute path resolution loading system libraries.
EDIT::
But I guess yu could put a statically linked app on the socket, wrap it in failfs and gave it proxy requests to a dynamically-linked app process if your app must use something like python.
dhx 4 hours ago [-]
Is it different from using seccomp with SECCOMP_RET_ERRNO and return code of EOPNOTSUPP for all filesystem syscalls?
wpyoga 7 hours ago [-]
Is it possible to load the dynamic libraries before fork()ing and somehow prevent the path lookup and library loading? This will open up new possibilities for hardened security models.
saint-evan 6 hours ago [-]
That's a fun idea but take python (very familiar)... It's very deeply dynamic and even if yu run imports at the top of your code yu still have many large libs with lazy code execution baked deep inside their internal functions so that assumes yu actually know what code paths the application will hit later. More importantly this goes in the opposite direction of Python's lazy imports thingy.. basically you've got a bomb and yu wouldn't wanna do that. Also, imagine the startup time for large apps. I'd just put a statically-linked binary in front and proxy back to the dynamically-linked process if I can't rewrite the main app in something like Go or Rust.
ffsm8 5 hours ago [-]
You explicitly stated as such, I just want to emphasize it again: it only breaks dynamically linked libraries, which - from a stability point of view - is an antipattern anyway.
Almost always youre better off producing a bundle which has everything (excluding the runtime) included... Or just use better languages which categorically don't even have this scenario, eg golang, Java, rust, etc pp
jack_pp 6 hours ago [-]
idk if it's just me but deliberately using "yu" instead of "you" is annoying and makes me not really take whatever you say seriously
Nexxxeh 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah, it feels "not ND friendly" too. Totally breaks my reading flow.
I am the person addressed when someone says "you", not "yu". Why is that person changing how I'm addressed?
It's also confusing because it feels initially like it's some new Linux command or user, like "su".
matsemann 2 hours ago [-]
ah, first sentence I thought yu was a typo. Second sentence I saw it I thought it might be a linux component of sorts. So it's not just a stylistic choice, it's actually harming my comprehension of what they're writing.
tgv 4 hours ago [-]
Lil' TAFKAP, the modern version of Saint Exupery.
pandemic_region 6 hours ago [-]
Sorry man I've been out of the loop with the hip crowd for a good while, but is "yu" now a thing like "thru" once was?
saint-evan 6 hours ago [-]
no biggie... I just like how 'yu' looks. It's an aesthetic.
pandemic_region 6 hours ago [-]
Thanks, at first I thought it was the name of another tool or library ;)
asimovDev 5 hours ago [-]
I immediately parsed it as some CLI i don't know about as well
A process which is chrooted into failfs cannot open new files. It is limited to the set of filesystem file descriptors it already has open (presumably set up before the chroot or inherited into the process from some container runtime).
nesarkvechnep 3 hours ago [-]
They’ll do everything but adopt Capsicum. Shame.
shevy-java 7 hours ago [-]
So basically more fine tuned jail controls.
I'd love if chrooting would become easier. In particular a
requirement to have bash or a specific shell is annoying;
imo a simple REPL should suffice already there. I wrote one
that works years ago, need to look into what is all needed
for a chroot (I always used bash for this but I'd also want
to change to my own shell eventually).
rwmj 7 hours ago [-]
We wanted capabilities[1]. Instead we get this over-complicated series of system calls with no design consistency that you have to use very carefully, else they can be bypassed (see the list of caveats on the failfs page).
I'd love to have one that randomly fails, so we could debug e.g. databases and other apps that are supposed to be resilient. I'd call it "havocfs". Doesn't corrupt data, just randomly fails reads/writes/etc. Some software is supposed to handle that gracefully. Would be a great test tool...
Btw, never understood why do we need it in kernel as a part of kernel project.
kasabali 3 hours ago [-]
Because Samba is GPLv3
vbezhenar 3 hours ago [-]
For performance.
u8080 2 hours ago [-]
But it could be DKMS module or something other run as separate project? I got software arch point, but it seems very odd having such things in kernel project, no?
speed_spread 1 hours ago [-]
If the kernel had a standard ABI, an out-of-tree kernel module would be the way. As it is, DKMS is a pain and so in-tree modules are the easiest where license allows it.
sgt 6 hours ago [-]
I wonder how many people nowadays see something like this, clicking on it and expecting a "Download and Install" button.
not an apple or anthropic announcement, so hackernews will be tumbleweeds on this.
vconnor 5 hours ago [-]
Linux now is LLM friendly, Hacker News will be all over this.
Harukadia 4 hours ago [-]
How big change is this?
seb1204 3 hours ago [-]
A record breaker on all fronts according to post
alisharify7 1 hours ago [-]
a
alisharify7 1 hours ago [-]
nice
VCFundedGenYer 1 hours ago [-]
Beware - this was Torvalds' fever dream of suddenly discovering vibe coding and unleashing it on the kernel like a five year old with candy.
Expect catastrophic problems. There is likely a lot of slop in the code now + testers already found race conditions.
Torvalds' behavior in the past few weeks has been alarming.
surajrmal 1 hours ago [-]
Which will just put pressure to improve the testing situation, not necessarily change stance on AI written patches. In fact AI is quite good at catching issues and root causing them back to recent changes so they could automate that journey a bit better as well to fill in any gaps not caught at review time.
rvz 30 minutes ago [-]
Remember, you are "not allowed" to criticize Linus around how he uses LLMs on patches he himself doesn't understand in the Linux Kernel, despite screaming at others in doing the exact same thing (with him and Claude introduces a bug in the process).
This is especially with C code which has hundreds of foot-guns and you can just look at how Linus does not care about code quality in something as critical like an OS kernel and then carelessly introduces a race condition.
If that was anyone else and Linus caught it, they would be completely smoked by his wrath in the mailing list.
Still sucks that it has to be reverse-engineered
My father is mostly on Apple and tries to use his iPad as a PC, ie with files and "the filesystem", he tries to get out of using extra iCloud for pictures (using Proton, or he asks me about Immich, or he wants to use an external HDD, or use Synology Photos and backup). He's mostly on the iPad + keyboard because it's a nicely managed device update-wise and "what I can install"-wise, virus-wise.
But I recent told him: Just give up. Buy (rent!) the storage, you are too depended on me, there is always something with the non-Apple solutions. Yes, your iTunes library is a mess on the filesystem, just don't look at it through anything else than "Music". Yes, Proton Drive eats 400 GB of your iPad storage now, I don't know how to trim that regularly. I'm sorry, it's either Linux and I can help set some things up, or full Apple. Choose. His current mixed, "trying to get best-of-both-worlds", approach is just pure unexpected pain, every time again.
Edit: I also have an iPad, it does work for me, but where my father is trying to use his iPad as a central, primary device (the hub), for me it is a client (spoke) of my own infra. Apps get access to information and I never use Apple services for anything. So indeed, Immich, Proton, Home Assistant, government and banking apps, etc. My iPad is throw-away: If it dies, it dies... I buy a new one, log into all (self-hosed) services and I'm 100% back up and running. Doing the same for my father is also pain, because his Home Assistant will have issues, or his Immich instance, and it's real work to fix, and he won't tell me for months if it does not work and work piles up. So, I tell him to surrender to Apple... It die a little inside.
I love Proton services and have been a subscriber for years. I do not understand what is going on with this. I have proton drive on my iPhone, I manually open it monthly to let my photos sync. I pay for the storage on proton drive to _save_ space locally, but whenever I sync to proton drive the storage space used locally by the app is almost equal to a local photo library! Yes I can delete the app, re-install it monthly to sync my library once, but it quickly balloons to dozens of gigabytes when I start to sync my local photos.
Can anyone at proton explain what is going on here?
Since he apparently wants a PC, isn't the logical conclusion the opposite? "Just give up. Buy a Windows/Linux laptop, you are too dependent on Apple, there is always something with the Apple solutions."
The current plan is to put Ubuntu on the Macbook, not sure what to do with the iPad but make it less "primary computer" will be one of the policies to implement indeed. Maybe he will be happy with an external disk and f-spot, and his music nicely sorted into files. Then some generic backup solution to a Synology NAS or something...
They never managed to get it working for their liking, it wasn't able to run the stuff their friends used to talk about or share via CD/DVD/USB sticks, and they did not wanted to bother me with "dumb" questions.
So I rather that they have Windows, go down to the local PC store when something isn't working as it should.
It's been a while since I experienced people sharing software one discs by the way, it's been a while since I saw discs at all ;)
macOS also has (well, had) extreme UI stability. You could transport someone from 2003 used to Mac OS X 10.0 two decades into the future and they would be able to use macOS Ventura (and all previous versions) purely by muscle memory. Good luck doing that with Windows and Linux with their constant UI churn.
Interestingly enough, by iOS-ifying macOS, they've made it much easier to shift someone using an iPhone from Windows to macOS, because they already recognize many of the UI and UX paradigms.
Once it's configured for these kind of people, it's really fire and forget, and it was already that in 2016.
She did go back to fix things because the grandma managed to delete the printer, and she said that the downloads folder was full of exe files with sketchy names.
I'm with you on the macOS stability in the past. The thing that gets me is that Windows somehow gets a pass in this regard, but there have been some pretty big changes over the years.
When I say it's been fire-and-forget, I mean that for at least two decades.
If papercuts turn up, you are running the wrong distro or secretly a power user that naturally causes problems for themselves every now and then. This won't happen with normal users on a long term stable distro.
So the Minecraft crew would regularly release updates and obfuscate the code again - most updates were to fix issues/add features, but some were purely for obfuscation. So if you wanted your mod to work it meant not playing any other version.
I'm guessing we'll start seeing more regular updates from software makers; will the updates be fixing bugs or adding features - sure - but I'm guessing that quite a few updates will be simply to obfuscate the code and change addresses around so that any mods that worked before, won't in the new version. Sure an LLM could just decomp it again, but I figure most people won't want to spend the tokens/time it takes for the LLM to actually do the work on that new decomp effort. And with the fact that most people have "auto-update" defaulted to on, I'm foreseeing that apps will get auto-updated likely daily in the near future to combat this.
Years ago, someone once told me "I hope you live in interesting times" ... I don't think this is what they had in mind.
Edit: But good point of course, but I believe it will remain cat and mouse, no idea how Apple internally sees it, whether they really don't care, or actively break stuff (break your ** face tonight).
That was the same issue with jailbreaking, it gave a lot of freedom, while also being a PITA to deal with at every security fix and system change. Many jailbreakers came to parent's conclusion and just "give up".
With AI and stuff like rea.tools does that really matter anymore?
Let's just accept that this is the new norm: Giant companies who had over 20 years to open their shit up, chose to be ass about it and refused, and now we can just take it. Screw them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/18sjnwb/state_of_mac...
* https://support.apple.com/en-ca/104984
The "3-2-1" strategy is even possible if you rotate drives between locations:
> For extra security and convenience, you can back up to multiple disks. If you work in two locations, you may want to keep backup disks in both places.
* https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mh40739/mac
I'm reading that as many new AI assisted code patches. Not everyone does an obviously bad job at submitting AI assisted code.
Not a criticism, just an observation.
https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html
Broadly it says: you can use AI as much as you like. You have to disclose use of AI. You, as a person, not the AI, are responsible for the quality of Linux kernel submissions.
As someone who doesn't know much about linux kernel work: what does being responsible for the submission look like in practice? Are you expected to find fixes if your change causes unanticipated issues?
At least that's how I do it. When someone offers a patch to an open source project, I don't really care if that person has a PhD, or if that person does this in their free time, or if that patch is actually the result of a whole team working together. I judge the patch based on the value it brings to me as a maintainer.
Obviously the code has to be good, but also the interaction with whoever offers the patch has to be smooth: if I have a question, if I need them to confirm/change/test/elaborate on something, I need that to work.
If I feel like I would be faster doing the work myself AND this author is not putting effort into it (e.g. they just copy-paste an AI), I will not review that work. Possibly I will distrust that author. If too many contributions end up wasting my time, I will start limiting the contributions to people I know/trust, etc.
In terms of maintenance, I don't see a difference between getting a contribution from a stranger or from a stranger using an AI.
In terms of philosophy, that's obviously different: One may not want to accept contributions from people using AI because they think that AI is bad for society, for instance. And I would totally understand that. But if the stance (and it seems to be Linus' stance) is that a patch is only judged based on its technical merit, then I don't see why AI-in-the-loop would be an issue.
The thing which I think is going to be a very sore lesson for everyone at some point is that if anyone uses AI it becomes a burden for everyone. Even in projects that reject all AI usage.
What I can do is create 50 personas that all contribute patches. 40 of them get called out and are distrusted, but 10 make it through. I can give more focus on those 10 to ensure their trust level increases. Then slowly have them all come together to shepard some subsystem where I'm going to be the only real person involved and can sign off on my own work in a that looks like I have oversight from the outside.
In the past this was possible but took a very high cost. You need a bunch of competent software engineers who you can trust not to blab their secret mission. Today anyone can give it a try.
Perhaps not in terms of maintenance. In terms of provenance there is a significant difference between "I wrote this." and "I found this."
It's just another way of saying, you can't have AI submit things on its own and you can't "blame" AI for anything you submit, you're expected to understand and be able to explain anything you're putting forward, if there is an issue with your submission, doesn't matter at all if you go back to AI to address it, so long as all issues are properly addressed.
The code is either of sufficient quality, or it's not, doesn't matter whether you or AI wrote it, it's your name on it, you're responsible for it and its your reputation on the line.
Should be applied to anything someone is releasing without big disclosures.
At least until a few months from now when it will be clear that human code is the weak point.
How long until we get "all FOSS code is made by AI and so it's not copyrighted" arguments when using code in unlicensed ways?
It also hides what would be a great signal on which ML models to use to get the best quality code. Like, wouldn't the community like to know which models made the code with the least bugs?
(This is why fan made videos using copyrighted characters can be taken down.)
[0] https://lwn.net/Articles/1099594/ (user required).
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20261009083137.3-1-sashal@kerne...
Nothing says you have to use AI. Just like nothing says you have to use a computer. You could have someone print the code for you, write your patch with a pencil on paper, get a pigeon to send your patch to someone who can then submit it, and it would be judge in the same manner. Granted, it's probably more efficient to use a computer.
Except your employer, usually.
Doesn't this just end up with the tech billionaires being the only ones who can make software. Will they decide to allow their models to maintain/create FOSS? Seems unlikely.
(Disclosure: I work for Morse)
> Device Tree Updates
> Apple platform gains support for M3 Pro, Max and Ultra SoC
Incredible how fast support for Apple silicon is progressing.
https://x.com/JoshuaSWarren/status/2111923039378211100?s=20
Would be cool if Apple decided to support Linux, of course. But why would they? If it was profitable for them, they would do it. Instead they think it's more profitable to enshittify their products. That's life.
Now people who reverse engineer that to help us run Linux on Apple hardware... I would guess they don't make a fortune doing that, and I find it impressive work.
This analogy is really tortured. Apple doesn't make bikes.
But they do make software, and hardware. People want to use them however they choose.
This is more like a bike company choosing a proprietary air valve that only lets you inflate your bike tires with their own company-branded air pump, even though there's been other air pumps for many decades before them, and their design isn't particularly better than the others. And you say "well they don't have to design an air valve adapter to use other air pumps" and -- yeah, that's true. But people are gonna bitch.
So we agree :-). Of course I would like it if Apple was making my life better. I just find it naive to consider that companies are anything other than profit-maximizing machines. If they happen to do something you like, it's because it is profitable for them. They couldn't care less about you.
> But people are gonna bitch.
Whatever you do, people are gonna bitch. Again it would be a bit naive to think that if you do "your best", or if you do "what's right", or if you "genuinely try", then everybody will appreciate. There will always be enough people bitching, of that I am certain.
Pretty disappointed in Qualcomm's promise of upstream support for Snapdragon X Elite turning out to be: lol, not actually so you can run Linux on devices, only so you can maybe boot without most devices working...
Hope things will keep improving despite lack of help from vendors.
hopefully without kernel-slops :P good job everyone btw!
Features? Bugfixes? What? Look how many commits we've got!
2. This type of stat was always being shared with each new release, giving a general indication of the size of changes. They did not started posting it all of a sudden due to AI.
Is this satire? :D
During peer review a race condition was found in his code. Would he have spotted it himself when writing the code manually? Maybe, maybe not. He's only human, and the AI is only AI.
I'm in the "AI is great!" optimist camp myself, which is how I felt in the very early days of "this little crappy hobbyist Linux kernel thing that'll never go anywhere important" minix-list flamewars.
Once again, Linus demonstrating that those who understand the code, own the code.
I think this says way more about the industry being completely out of touch and less about Linus leading the pack.
There are intelligent arguments against using AI, your comment is not referring to any of them.
In short: Linus feels responsible for the quality of the Kernel, he expects the same of other devs. He does not care about the tools used to generate the code. He (or some other human) will call out submitted slop, whether LLM generated or human generated.
The kernel developers are probably a bit further in their thinking then some developers. They've been dealing with many thousands of contributors for decades. Git was invented by Linus Torvalds specifically to deal with ensuring only the best patches make it into the kernel.
Somebody posted a video with Greg Kroah-Hartman last week or so commenting on how he's been dealing with all the AI generated security bug reports. His key point is that AI generated reports are meaningless unless they come with a suggested fix as well. If you are going to generate the report, you might as well generate the fix. And it's a lot easier for him to review if the fix fixes anything worth fixing then to piece together a fix from a lengthy report. The larger the report, the less likely it is to get any attention. If the person contributing can't articulate why the fix is needed or how it works, they just reject the change and toss it back. That strikes me as very pragmatic. Judge a change on its merits. Not on how it was created. A report without a suggested fix is relatively meaningless.
The answer to this issue is not to equate any code generated by LLMs to slop. It is just not true. As you say, the latest models often flag things that I would definitely miss, or they simplify my code significantly with a just-released feature. I see benefits to code quality all day from using LLMs.
I'm just saying (not to you but to comments below): Lets keep it constructive, which means: lets keep it real, as in close to truth. Yes vibe coding exists, and it has it's place (ie in prototyping?). But not in the kernel, and also not in my own line of works. LLMs do have a place there though.
And it can read all of the logs in the backend and browser simultaneously and understand what is causing issues. I’ve used that a few times and it is such a game changer for weird bugs.
slop is slop.
Human slop is equally as bad, but this is not what Linus chose in this case, he chose to accept the higher risk of almost 2x as much more bugs using LLMs which lead to the introduction of LLM slop.
I don't care if it is Linus or anyone else, slop is slop human or not, with LLMs it is far worse.
I force all work to be split up into chunks, properly investigated, spiked, and planned out, and then implemented via TDD (with only system-boundary mocking permitted). It's not perfect, but I've seen regression bugs very much cut so far.
Beyond that, if it's a GUI app, I also require the TDD cycle to require GUI tests with screenshot evidence, and proper assert statements.
He didn't even review the code. [0] Someone else did.
[0] https://lwn.net/ml/all/as6vBoWQGglxXxb0@thinkstation/
This is what happens when you use LLMs and this is far more irresponsible of Linus because he is vibe coding C code in the kernel.
You know it won't be properly reviewed and understood.
Using LLMs to review code is much more useful imo but it can also cause problems due to the natural lazyness of a person.
You wouldn't want the OS you are using to be developed by a dilligent but a low IQ and mediocre skill level programmer.
I'm not saying other people can't possibly use LLMs to generate code effectively but it seems super suspicious from my experience as it triggers laziness and reluctance to put effort into understanding every piece of code.
Do you now?
> You wouldn't want the OS you are using to be developed by a dilligent but a low IQ and mediocre skill level programmer.
So you also know that people using LLMs to produce code are diligent but low IQ and mediocre skill?
> it triggers laziness and reluctance to put effort into understanding every piece of code.
Linus has been mostly reviewing code for what... decades? The rest of the contributors have been his LLM in some way. Would you say that he has gotten "reluctant to put effort into understanding every piece of code" he reviews?
And then somehow consider that because LLMs can make bad programmers worse, it has to mean that it will make all programmers worse. And therefore Linus Torvalds using LLMs will necessarily make Linux worse.
Something like this?
https://pages.skybrian.com/2026/kernel-cve-fixes/
Unfortunately, yu can't use dynamically-linked apps anyway since failfs would break absolute path resolution loading system libraries.
EDIT:: But I guess yu could put a statically linked app on the socket, wrap it in failfs and gave it proxy requests to a dynamically-linked app process if your app must use something like python.
Almost always youre better off producing a bundle which has everything (excluding the runtime) included... Or just use better languages which categorically don't even have this scenario, eg golang, Java, rust, etc pp
I am the person addressed when someone says "you", not "yu". Why is that person changing how I'm addressed?
It's also confusing because it feels initially like it's some new Linux command or user, like "su".
A process which is chrooted into failfs cannot open new files. It is limited to the set of filesystem file descriptors it already has open (presumably set up before the chroot or inherited into the process from some container runtime).
I'd love if chrooting would become easier. In particular a requirement to have bash or a specific shell is annoying; imo a simple REPL should suffice already there. I wrote one that works years ago, need to look into what is all needed for a chroot (I always used bash for this but I'd also want to change to my own shell eventually).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security
https://docs.kernel.org/next/filesystems/failfs.html
https://github.com/hakuna-m/wubiuefi
Expect catastrophic problems. There is likely a lot of slop in the code now + testers already found race conditions.
Torvalds' behavior in the past few weeks has been alarming.
This is especially with C code which has hundreds of foot-guns and you can just look at how Linus does not care about code quality in something as critical like an OS kernel and then carelessly introduces a race condition.
If that was anyone else and Linus caught it, they would be completely smoked by his wrath in the mailing list.