Linus Torvalds wrote:Linux kernel head Linus Torvalds seems delighted with the first release candidate (rc1) of the Linux kernel version 5.8, which contains 800,000 new lines of code and over 14,000 changed files, representing about a 20% overhaul of the kernel's files.
I read the article and none of those changes and updates will have any effect on what I'm doing here in Missouri. As far as I can tell at the moment, all the new kernel will do is take up more room on my memory sticks. That's not to say I'm unhappy. It is encouraging to note that the core of Linux OS's is being improved. The fact that it needs to be improved so heavily probably is more of an indication of the speed at which technology is changing rather than outing any shortcomings in the kernel. I can only make noteworthy two things in that article. One is that nothing is said about nVIdia. I presume Linus is happy leaving things they way they are in that part of the world. The other note of interest is the apparent good feelings he has about Microsoft.
Interesting read, and yes I took the time to read all of it.
Looks like 5.8 is really no bigger than the previous kernels, just lots of changes.
They took out some things and added new things. But much of the modifications are in the repositories.
No I didn't see anything about Nvidia but remember, Nvidia is all proprietary, so they can only add what Nvidia gives them to add. He added a lot of Microsoft support too.
I know from other articles he has been working with Microsoft since they are considering using the Linux kernel rather than writing their own new one, so the Linux kernel will probably need a lot of things Microsoft depends on.
I read another article about three weeks ago where some of the major Windows program providers are starting to look at porting their products over to Linux, but they will not be open source, and you still have to pay for them as usual.
Much of these were for business use, and POS software. A lot of restaurants have changed over to using a Linux POS software program and perhaps those companies are beginning to feel the pinch. Who knows, most articles are so vague you never know what your read even after reading them twice or three times.
I think the move to a Linux kernel up in Redmond is inevitable. It's just a matter of time. The current kernel is about as old as Windows itself and suffers from a lot of mishandling as it trekked through various generations of Windows. It is true that Linus personally is involved with this migration, and I am thinking as you are. Linux is upgrading to accommodate what is to come. The concern I have is the magnitude of the changes in the current version. This might be a normal churning when the speed of the Internet exceeds that of your operating system. I can't say. It just impresses the daylights out of me that Linux needs to be improved that much. 800k lines of new code? Yikes! That means the whole kernel is about 4 million lines of coding.
I thought the Linux kernel was around 22 million lines of code before being condensed into the installed version.
Internet speeds may reach Peta level some day, but probably not during my lifetime.
Just think, in our own lifetimes we've seen it go from under 1200 baud, to 22.6 k, to 1 gig and beyond in some cases now.
Seems I read something about Terrabytes per second is possible on the latest fiber optics.
I remember calling my cousin when he was stationed overseas, and there was a 7 second delay on the old twisted pair.
Took us about ten minutes to figure out how to talk to each other. Then we were on the phone for over an hour.
And no you don't want to see my phone bill for that one, hi hi. I will say this, it was over a whole weeks pay!
Now people complain if a connection isn't instant, hi hi.
Quantum computing works at a speed that exceeds anything we can do today. I have no doubt that once they figure out how to bring quantum computing to the average office environment, they will be using the same technology to transfer data over a network of some sort. I'm thinking it's going to be holographic instead of the serial stream we know today. Plus, ones and zeros will be obsolete. There is no clear definition for a bit of data in the quantum world.
Yeah, I don't know what Linus was referring to with his 800,000 lines of code comment. I assumed it is source code because once it is compiled all the lines become one serial stream of binary bits. In that case the compiled kernel is only one line of code. LOL
I was doing that with my html pages for a while. Running them through a program that took out everything not needed. This always caused me a couple of headaches I had to go in and fix manually, because it removed a space where a space was required, or something. Don't remember for sure what it was without going back and checking my notes regarding that problem.
The idea was to make the website load much faster. But now with HTML5 and 1 gig LANS and higher speed computer, I cannot tell the difference between one I optimized and one I didn't, provided the images are all optimized.
To compare speeds, you always have to clear your cache else your website will partly load from what is already in cache.
Although I know the CPU only uses 0 and 1, we also have 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit, and up buses.
Plus hexidecimal, etc. notations. It all gets quite confusing to me, hi hi.
Many years ago when I was doing the Octal Entry 8 bit computer stuff on paper tape.
I actually had to learn about arithmetic shift left. Don't remember why now, but I needed it at the time, hi hi.
Taking the white space out of your HTML code is similar to what I was telling you about long file path names when you do rsync. The processor has to read those spaces and enough of them will slow things down. That only matters when the web site is gigantic. Processors now and days can read in excess of 4 billions bits per second. So if your web page loads in .012 seconds instead of .015 does it really matter? LOL The answer is, yes, to all those people who still use old hardware. Not saying who in particular, but you know.
I'm sorry to be the first to tell you this, but the Silver Yogi was build for Windows 7. Yes, it is old.
You certainly must know that the age of a computer has only an incidental bearing on it's speed. The Silver Yogi has a 3.73 gigahertz Intel Pentium D processor in it which is only a tad slower than my Intel i7 4790k tower which runs at 4.0 gigahertz. Most of those WalMart specials come in about 2 gigahertz, have less RAM, and slower bus speed regardless of what year it was purchased. I can't imagine rsync running at the same speed on Deb's computer as it does on your Silver bullet. As for the other computers in your fortress, they can't be even as fast as what Deb is using.
Debi's Win7 machine is over ten years old, and runs circles around the brand new Win10 machine.
That gives me a project to try tonight.
I want to copy the Master File Server File over to a 500 gig I carry down to the house for safe keeping.
I'll do it on Debi's new Win10 machine which is now Linux Mint 19.3.
I know the first copy will take forever, but I will then check how fast it reads the finished file looking for a change.
I'll time both just out of curiosity.
I've been wanting to do this anyhow, just out of curiosity.
I have the old 500 gig File Server that I now have copied everything off, in duplicate, hi hi.
I will first use the Silver Yogi and copy my onboard File Server to it to get the time it takes.
Then copy it from that drive to the second 500 gig and time that.
Then I'll erase it and do the same thing on the new computer and time that.
I'll let you know how long each thing took.
Debi's Win7 machine is over ten years old, and runs circles around the brand new Win10 machine.
Oh yeah? Well ... I have a Windows 10 laptop that will give any of your spiffy Linux boxes a good run for the money. Odd as it might seem, I have the distinct impression that Windows runs faster than both the Linux installs on that same laptop. I don't know of a good benchmark off the top of my head, but if I were as curious about speed as you are I would find the software to do it.
To be fair about it my Windows 7 tower installation runs about as fast as Windows 10. Things slowed down a bit when Intel had to fix the security problems with it's processors, but both Windows platforms are truly performing about equally well. I did upgrade the memory on both and that alone made significant improvements. Windows 7 also slowed down when I converted from MBR to EFI booting. That delay is cause by the fact that I no longer use Grub to boot the tower. Because Linux developers can't seem to figure out how to boot two separate Ubuntu based OS's without calling them all the same name and crashing Grub, I switched over to rEFInd. It takes a smidgen longer to boot but there isn't an OS it can't boot. So, there is a slight delay now while the bootloader dynamically looks for all the available boot devices instead of relying on whatever is hard coded into Grub.
OK, did my experiment yesterday and last night.
I have two identical 500 gig external HDs reformatted NTFS so they are clean.
I copied my Master File server to Drive One.
I connected Drive One and Drive Two to our newest computer, the one that had Win10 on it, now running Linux Mint 19.3
I used RSync to copy the file Master File Server from Drive One to Drive Two.
Total Time was 1 Hour 27 Minutes.
I reformatted Drive Two again so it was clean.
Moved both drives over to the Silver Yogi running Debian.
I used RSync with the exact same setting to copy the Master File Server from Drive One to Drive Two.
Total Time was 52 Minutes.
The Silver Yogi beat out the brand new computer hands down!
I knew it would!
Like I said ... the Silver Yogi has an Intel processor running nearly as fast as processors can run.
The defunct Windows 10 computer has the minimum you can get away with to run it's OS.
I'm not surprised at your results.
I knew it would be a mistake to buy a computer off-the-shelf, but having the frau's computer not working might have been a sorrier end problem. At least I got her up and running PDQ, albeit slower than molasses in the dead of winter.
I've had much better luck buying built-up computers with only the bare minimum I needed for what I did with them.
Have never been displeased with any computer I had built for me, nor the prices.
What I don't understand though is how some home computers can cost upwards of 4 grand.
I know it would be hard to convince you, but, there are Windows computers that work very well and which you can buy off the shelf. The MSI laptop I have chronicled here is one of them. It did not need all the refinements I put into it in order to have a pleasing experience in the Windows environment. It wasn't fully loaded, but it was well above the minimum because it was marketed as a gaming computer. It was the gaming computer of the year in fact, which I bought a year later at a significant discount. LOL However, all that quality has a price; nearly $1000 in fact without any discounts applied. You can knock off a few hundred if you want a laptop that is great with Windows but missing all the gaming enhancements. I would be highly suspicious of anything under $700.
Those $4000 computers are not your typical home computer. The cost of state of the art components could easily approach that price. The 24 core Intel processors from AMD and Intel go for well over $1000. Add to that a state of the art nVidia GPU and we are already at $2500. A power supply, RAM, motherboard, cooling, and a spiffy case to put it all in will easily reach the $4000 mark, and that's just the components. Putting it all together with a monitor and keyboard and setting up an OS is additional. You might not need such a monster to play FarmTown, but it sure would be cool.
I think if I could spend that much, I would get a tall cabinet that used blade plug in components, hi hi.
I think computers will soon be a thing of the past, as far as folks owning them.
All they need is a device that can connect to a cloud server and pay big bucks to do so.
Probably a little extra for each program you want to use too!
Also learned something else too.
The tiny computers used by many doctors offices right now, are designed specifically for that purpose.
They will be next to impossible to use as a normal computer, so will eventually end up in landfills.
They won't have in them things that are not needed for the specific purpose they were designed for.
Sorta like off-the-shelf discount computers now, hi hi.
In some ways traditional computers are the dinosaurs of the digital age. The trend this century is toward mobile devices. We have netbooks, tablets, and smartphones all of which are computers by some other name. Even those wearable watches from Apple are computers in spite of the fact that they must be tethered to a mothership. You like to point out how the world is inundated by Linux, but most of that is in dedicated devices such as your doctor might be using. Everything from your automobile to your refrigerator has a computer chip and is likely connected to the Internet where it becomes the Internet of Things (IoT). Yes, a lot of raspberry pi's are and will be in landfills. And, yes, it's all connected to The Cloud. Welcome to the year 2020.
I have yet to meet a single person who can type 120 wpm on a laptop, much less a netbook, or a cell phone.
Heck, my cell phone couldn't even upgrade itself using its own data stream, it had to rely on a WiFi connection provided by others. They admitted the upgrade was TOO BIG for them to handle on their LOW QUALITY system. They didn't have the capability of using their own system to make their own system work.
How is that Progress? Sound to me like they are moving Backwards, back to the 1970's in stead of moving forward.
How easy is it to hack LoT devices? And since all of the are connected to the CLOUD, that makes the CLOUD most vulnerable don't it. You want to trust your personal and private data to an easily hacked available everywhere system?
I don't!
You want to trust your personal and private data to an easily hacked available everywhere system?
Well ... my personal and private medical records have been hacked, or at least the server on which they are stored (probably run on Linux) has been compromised. My financial institutions, both banking and investments, have also been hacked. If any of that was on a cloud it was internal to the company. So, yes, I don't feel any more vulnerable using DropBox than I do logging into my online banking account. I'm doing all I can on my end.
I also don't quite understand why you would want to type 120 wpm on your tablet. It isn't designed for that kind of application. And I can't speak to your objection to allow updates to be downloaded via your home network. I do know that wireless and cell phone networks by design are slower than hardwire, and time is money. We all have our own philosophical principles to suit our needs, and I can honestly sympathize with your objections. Personally, I allow my Android to update without any intervention on my part. I'm certain it does it over the Internet using my WiFi too because every time I look up my data usage for the cell phones it hovers around zero.
Based on some of the things I've read recently, any bank or institution, including any local, county, state, or federal government can easily be hacked into. It is what the hackers do while there that can reap havoc.
One of the most recent I read about was a high school kid in Ferdinand County, didn't give the state, who for 3 years was fixing the tickets for all of his friends who got one. While the school was closed for the virus, someone from their IT department found a list of connects to the county sheriffs office court database dating back three years, then it was just a matter of viewing the security footage from the science lab to see who was on that computer at the connect times.
They nailed him! But he did no time, got no fines, and only 6 months probation. Said he thought he was using the schools simulator, hi hi.
My only point about the 120 wpm was that it takes a REAL Computer do any Real Serious Work!
All other devices are just for fun and games!
