this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
351 points (98.6% liked)

Linux

48693 readers
1777 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 36 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] qaz@lemmy.world 114 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That's not to say the two men don't think AI will be helpful in the future. Indeed, Torvalds noted one good side effect already: "NVIDIA has gotten better at talking to Linux kernel developers and working with Linux memory management," because of its need for Linux to run AI's large language models (LLMs) efficiently.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 89 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

so THATS why we are getting better nvidia support.

i knew it just couldnt be from the goodness of their newly converted hearts.

[–] Miaou@jlai.lu 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You didn't know GPUs are used for training/running DNN?

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 21 points 8 months ago

sure, but am i surprised this is the only reason they improved desktop drivers for us? no.

am i disappointed? yeah, a little.

[–] stembolts@programming.dev 60 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Hahaha. I love it. Fuck closed source hardware gatekeepers.

Nice to see them groveling for performance.

Kneel!!

C'mon, I can joke. Such a cathartic paragraph to read. Intractable cunts.

[–] gnutrino@programming.dev 89 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Did not know the thing about purposefully adding rogue tabs to kconfig files to catch poorly written parsers. That's fucking hilarious and I'd love to have the kind of clout to get away with something like that rather than having to constantly work around other people's mistakes.

[–] Toribor@corndog.social 86 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I write a lot of scripts that engineers need to run. I used to really try to make things 'fail soft' so that even if one piece failed the rest of the script would keep running and let you know which components failed and what action you needed to take to fix the problem.

Eventually I had so many issues with people assuming that any errors that didn't result in a failure were safe to ignore and crucial manual steps were being missed. I had to start making them 'fail hard' and stop completely when a step failed because it was the only way to get people to reliably perform the desired manual step.

Trying to predict and account for other people's behavior is really tricky, particularly when a high level of precision is required.

[–] unreliable@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 8 months ago

It is a developer milestone :) when you learn to be a resilient applicant is about recovery situation you perfect understanding. Fail fast everything else. Repeat 1000 times, you have something

[–] bort@sopuli.xyz 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

soft failures add complexity and ambiguity to your system, as it creates many paths and states you have to consider. It's generally a good idea to keep the exception handling simple, by failing fast and hard.

here is a nice paper, that highlights some exception handling issues in complex systems

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14-paper-yuan.pdf

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

This is why I enjoy programming libraries only I will ever use. "Do I need to account for user ignorance and run a bunch of early exit conditions at the beginning of this function to avoid throwing an exception? Naww, fuck it, I know what I'm doing."

[–] jcg@halubilo.social 3 points 8 months ago

It's the quickest way to prove to yourself that you know what you're doing... Most of the time, anyway...

[–] Hexarei@programming.dev 4 points 8 months ago

Always fail soft in underlying code and hard in user space IMHO

[–] youngGoku@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Sounds familiar, haha.

[–] Nemoder@lemmy.ml 46 points 8 months ago

Hohndel agreed but added that the industry needs to support these smaller projects -- and not only with money. "Companies need to engage with these projects. Have your company adopt a couple of such projects and just participate. Read the code, review the patches, and provide moral support to the maintainers. It's as simple as that."

Really glad he said this, I keep seeing posts about how all these big companies could solve the problem by just throwing money at small projects and while that is better than nothing it would help way more to have their own developers helping to review and fix issues.

[–] vort3@lemmy.ml 20 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Is there a link to this talk (or interview, or whatever this is) but in a video format, or at least a text without all those «SEE ALSO» self ads?

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 5 points 8 months ago

Oh, I just asked the same question. I find it terrible article not to link to the source at the beginning or end of article. I would like to read or watch the original interview too.

[–] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Maybe it's this one (I'm in a rush here 🙂) ? https://youtube.com/watch?v=VHHT6W-N0ak Someone in the comments writes that the full interview is in the channel of Linux Foundation : https://piped.video/channel/UCfX55Sx5hEFjoC3cNs6mCUQ

[–] antithetical@lemmy.deedium.nl 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sadly no, that one is three months old. Hopefully they'll publish it on the Linux Foundation yt channel or something.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 8 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Linux Foundation yt channel

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 2 points 8 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/watch?v=VHHT6W-N0ak

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago

not yet, you should run an adblocker

[–] antithetical@lemmy.deedium.nl 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you're still interested it seems that they've uploaded the keynote, see link in my comment:
https://lemmy.deedium.nl/comment/115389

[–] vort3@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 months ago
[–] Vakbrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Wait a minute... BS stands for "Beautiful Science" now?

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Does anyone have the link for the source of the interview? I've looked through the article and couldn't see it at first glance.

[–] liara@lemm.ee 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Open Source Summit 2024 keynotes. I don't think any of the recordings are available yet.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I see. For clarity and preventing some confusing, it would have been a good idea to disclosed that in the beginning of the article. Thanks for the note. I'll wait until it's available then.

Would this channel be the place to look forward to? The Linux Foundation: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/channel/UCfX55Sx5hEFjoC3cNs6mCUQ

[–] liara@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

It literally was in the opening paragraph. Previous years keynotes are available in a playlist here, so I assume they'll do the same for this year's keynotes as well. The event only just ended yesterday.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 4 points 8 months ago

It literally was in the opening paragraph.

No, I mean they should have disclosed this talk/interview not being ready to the public consumption. Clicking the link just opened up the webpage and I was lost, expecting the watch or read the interview. There is no mention of this being not available yet, despite the link. That's what I mean being confusing. It's not the end of the world, and it would also not be the end of the world if they added a note after the link like "(note: talk is not available to watch for the public yet)".

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 8 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

here

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] hungrybread@hexbear.net 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

In addition, hardware developers reinvent old ways of doing things and only learn by making all the same mistakes that have been made before. It's sad, but true. 

This same criticism is validly launched at software devs all the time lol.

One thing I've anecdotalally seen and heard is hardware guys indicating that something is rock solid and solved because it's old, so building on top of it isn't a problem. Obviously we have to build on the old to get to the new, but if we just skip auditing hardware due to age we end up deploying vulnerable hardware globally. Spectre and Meltdown are an interesting example where I've heard from at least one distinguished professor that "everyone" believed branch prediction design/algorithms were essentially done. Was it adequately assessed from a security POV? Clearly not, but was it assessed from a security POV in general? I have no idea, but it would be nice as a tech enthusiast and software guy to see the other side of the fence take these things seriously in a more public way, in particular when it comes to assessing old hardware for new attack vectors.

[–] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago

Spectre and Meltdown are an interesting example where I’ve heard from at least one distinguished professor that “everyone” believed branch prediction design/algorithms were essentially done.

Interesting to hear this.

Was it adequately assessed from a security POV? Clearly not, but was it assessed from a security POV in general? I have no idea, but it would be nice as a tech enthusiast and software guy to see the other side of the fence take these things seriously in a more public way, in particular when it comes to assessing old hardware for new attack vectors.

Right.

[–] antithetical@lemmy.deedium.nl 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago

Cool, thanks for sharing!

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 2 points 8 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Keynote: Linus Torvalds, Creator of Linux & Git, in Conversation with Dirk Hohndel

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.