Linux 6.11 Released(lwn.net)
lwn.net
Linux 6.11 Released
https://lwn.net/Articles/990307/
127 comments
I am really surprised with RNDA3 support. I have never seen so many issue with iGPU (APU). It started with VP9 decoder issue (e.g. just playing videos on YouTube was enough to trigger it), but that got fixed after a very long time (required a new firmware). Multiple constant [different] crashes, but you can workaround most of them by adding amdgpu.sg_display=0 to your bootargs. It's already listed in Arch Linux wiki, Gentoo wiki, etc.
Again, I was surprised by the number of firmware and driver issues since RNDA1/2/3 have been around for years now.
Again, I was surprised by the number of firmware and driver issues since RNDA1/2/3 have been around for years now.
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6.10.5 fixed all my amdgpu issues.
6.10 broke my fedora gaming proton box and I was on holiday at the time and so upset I just nuked it and put windows on it to play games. Now it's only powered on on the weekends to play games and I've moved all my linux needs to a VM on my overspecc'd Mac.
I also had an AMDGPU system. 5600X, AMD 6800 GPU, Fedora 40. -> now win11 (which has so much cruft out of the box I am considering nuking it and going back haha)
I also had an AMDGPU system. 5600X, AMD 6800 GPU, Fedora 40. -> now win11 (which has so much cruft out of the box I am considering nuking it and going back haha)
Try Fedora Bazzite. It's inmutable and you'll get rollbacks at the grub prompt.
+1 just installed this yesterday. Still kicking the tires
Been running it for 3 months, very pleased with my all AMD pc.
Broke my nixos steam/proton setup also. Using game scope as the compositor. Switch to LTS (6.6 I think) solved it. Frustrating bug but they don’t call it nixos-unstable for nothing.
7900 GRE
In college, I used to run bleeding edge. But now...I will only run a bleeding edge system as an immutable distro or on a filesystem with quick rollbacks.
Yeah ... had I had an immutable system or something where rolling back was easy I would have ... I dunno Fedora/Linux + AMD hardware had been so rock solid I took it for granted.
I got bit twice.
First there was the bug that broke Chromium based apps when using SELinux. https://lore.kernel.org/all/30fc5b38165e4eda57d640eca76b7df1...
Then 6.10.6 didn't want to boot.
Usually I run into issues two or three times a year. I guess this time around they just happened to be a little closer together.
First there was the bug that broke Chromium based apps when using SELinux. https://lore.kernel.org/all/30fc5b38165e4eda57d640eca76b7df1...
Then 6.10.6 didn't want to boot.
Usually I run into issues two or three times a year. I guess this time around they just happened to be a little closer together.
I've had a few hard crashes (system freezes completely, ssh does not work) over the last two weeks on 6.10.x kernels. I am hoping that it is https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/3142 (and not hardware failure) but I've been unable to capture the kernel panic if it does occur.
Never had such an issue before.
Never had such an issue before.
Wow thanks for that link. I've had my machine crashing a couple of times as well the last couple of weeks, was absolutely stable before. I hope it's this and not hardware failure.
Just to add a non-problematic experience report to the mix: I've been using 6.10 for months on two AMD machines with different hardware (one with a 7840U and one with a 5700XT) without any issues whatsoever.
Ack. AMD gpus broke left and right with this version. Lot of issues reported : https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues
Even the latest Linux kernel 6.11 still have same issues (atleast for me)
Even the latest Linux kernel 6.11 still have same issues (atleast for me)
That's why I stick with Debian.
No idea if related, but I had a really frustrating issue recently on fedora/similar kernel version.
Resume from sleep stopped working, and boot started taking minutes. Going through logs I was able to figure out it was probably usb related, and that sleep worked if you were patient enough to wait for a timeout, but the issue persisted with all cables unplugged. The error code was something along the lines of failing to provide enough power for a device, I suspected my new speakers despite them having dedicated wall outlet power (usb audio despite being on the motherboard AFAIK)
Long story short someone in a thread somewhere suggested unplugging from the wall for 10 min and to my surprise it worked - I guess it cleared the fault somehow and it hasn't reoccurred (yet). Might be worth a try.
Resume from sleep stopped working, and boot started taking minutes. Going through logs I was able to figure out it was probably usb related, and that sleep worked if you were patient enough to wait for a timeout, but the issue persisted with all cables unplugged. The error code was something along the lines of failing to provide enough power for a device, I suspected my new speakers despite them having dedicated wall outlet power (usb audio despite being on the motherboard AFAIK)
Long story short someone in a thread somewhere suggested unplugging from the wall for 10 min and to my surprise it worked - I guess it cleared the fault somehow and it hasn't reoccurred (yet). Might be worth a try.
I too have been having AMD GPU video artifacting lately, but so far that is the only regression I've noticed in 6.10.x. I am still on 6.10.8 so I'm not sure if 6.10.10 will contain a fix for me just yet.
I was using a Fedora release with the 6.10 kernel, and I experienced frequent logouts and restarts, almost once per day. It's nice to see that others were having similarly poor experiences.
The past few releases were more problematic for me yeah. It's super anecdotal since I never used Linux before the v5.xx kernels but in comparison to those yes it's a bit less stable.
Kernel version 6.8 broke suspend ($ systemctl suspend) for me. I run two machines with near identical setups. I upgrade my "preview" machine first before updating my primary machine to test for defects.
If I boot from kernel version 6.5, suspend works fine. Hold shift while your machine is booting and the grub menu will allow you to select a different kernel version.
If I boot from kernel version 6.5, suspend works fine. Hold shift while your machine is booting and the grub menu will allow you to select a different kernel version.
The amdgpu driver has been the main source of issues for me on 6.10, but I had issues on older 6.x versions as well: for example, on a desktop with 2 monitors, I had to turn on the 2 monitors simultaneously or the UI would freeze.
How does Linux handle testing? They don't seem to have a CI system as far as I know. Presumably there's no big lab with automated testing on real hardware. Does anyone know how releases are tested?
Several companies (including mine, Toradex) have setup board farms to deal with Kernel regressions and bugs during the `-rc` window, ie, the kernel that is going to be released is heavily tested.
https://kernelci.org/ is a big one, Linaro has theirs https://lkft.linaro.org/, Intel has multiple farms, Collabora works relentlessly with GitLab integration https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/patc......
The kernel is very much tested before a release with gigantic automated labs on real hardware.
https://kernelci.org/ is a big one, Linaro has theirs https://lkft.linaro.org/, Intel has multiple farms, Collabora works relentlessly with GitLab integration https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/patc......
The kernel is very much tested before a release with gigantic automated labs on real hardware.
> The kernel is very much tested before a release with gigantic automated labs on real hardware.
So what went wrong?
So what went wrong?
I'd guess none of those labs are testing desktop environments playing videos and running 3D software on amdgpu.
As far as I remember, there is some automated testing before release but very limited in scope.
Explain how you would deal with CI in a kernel?
Take a machine, set it up to network boot, plug it in to a ZigBee-controlled plug. Every time you have a new version, a script bumps the netboot kernel and power cycles the machine, then runs tests. Those tests include "does it boot and respond to ssh", but also "can it run render jobs on the GPU", "does KDE start and if we connect over VNC did it render correctly", "do NFS performance tests show expected numbers", etc. Ideally, this box has a lot of hardware plugged in and those tests exercise all the drivers you can think of. For bonus points, scale horizontally; each kernel version can get booted on a Dell server and a Raspberry Pi and a Macbook and a Raptor POWER workstation and a Steam Deck (probably with battery removed) and [...], and all of these can netboot and run tests in parallel.
Honestly, I'd love to set up this kind of thing, but I've not seen a job for it that doesn't need C expertise:(
Honestly, I'd love to set up this kind of thing, but I've not seen a job for it that doesn't need C expertise:(
Is that just AMD? On my thinkpad X270 playing videos in Firefox is just a mess. All sorts of problems while Chromium is just fine. It's also fine on a copy of my system that I run on a thinkcentre tiny.
I do believe Chromium still has to be patched to support HW decode via vaapi, while recent Firefoxen turn it on out of the box. So it's likely that Chromium is using software rendering, bypassing any driver-related bugs.
Chromium doesn't support hardware decoded video though right? While Firefox does, so you're killing your battery life with extra cpu cycles.
Chromium doesn't document this but they support hardware video decode on Linux. Works best on Intel iGPU. AMD needed some patches to get it working using Vulkan IIRC and Nvidia is Nvidia.
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What did you have to do to get it to work for Intel iGPU? Passing all combinations of command line flags never made it work.
intel_gpu_top showed both Video and VideoEnhance markers signaling hardware decode as inactive, and all commenters on message boards that I came across essentially came to the same conclusion, that it doesn't work at least at the time I as trying a few months ago. I think it was that Chromium devs don't support it and block it from functioning in the code because of this or that upstream dependency not being stable.
intel_gpu_top showed both Video and VideoEnhance markers signaling hardware decode as inactive, and all commenters on message boards that I came across essentially came to the same conclusion, that it doesn't work at least at the time I as trying a few months ago. I think it was that Chromium devs don't support it and block it from functioning in the code because of this or that upstream dependency not being stable.
Have no problem using just this flag --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecodeLinuxGL on a laptop with HD Graphics 500. And I even think that flag is passed by default now.
Key thing is to make sure you are playing back supported codecs when checking for hw decode. E.g YouTube randomly forces av1 on clients and some older hardware don't support hw decode for it.
Also some distros like Fedora and OpenSUSE ship with partial codec support in their installation media.
An easy way to make sure you have all the right drivers in place is to test this in one of the Chromium flatpaks.
Though I have to state hardware video playback is not yet officially supported and it has broken a lot over the past due to this fact and the quality of the different GPU drivers in question here. The Chromium devs don't explicitly block vaapi on Intel hardware.
Key thing is to make sure you are playing back supported codecs when checking for hw decode. E.g YouTube randomly forces av1 on clients and some older hardware don't support hw decode for it.
Also some distros like Fedora and OpenSUSE ship with partial codec support in their installation media.
An easy way to make sure you have all the right drivers in place is to test this in one of the Chromium flatpaks.
Though I have to state hardware video playback is not yet officially supported and it has broken a lot over the past due to this fact and the quality of the different GPU drivers in question here. The Chromium devs don't explicitly block vaapi on Intel hardware.
I always had all the codecs and Vaapi on Firefox worked fine, but could specifically never get Youtube on Chromium to use GPU decoding, that was the main problem you're reminding me.
In this past year, I've since moved to Windows after like 7 years of constantly messing and tweaking Linux to kinda sorta almost for some stretch of time get all the things to work after spending hours looking for the right configuration. Look at how long this thread is, for example[0]. Or here most saying it still doesn't work[1] and the flags constantly change. Before Linux I was about 6 yrs on Mac. I hadn't used Windows for so long, it actually felt weird to have so much hardware and software support for anything I ever need to use.
I'll take your word for it that Chromium sometimes uses hardware decoding now. But as you say, and they should put that slogan on a T-shirt: "Linux on Desktop: not officially supported and it has broken a lot over the past due to lack of support and quality of driver". I wouldn't really characterize that as "have no problem using". It feels nice to have a system that just works without all that hassle and tweaking so I can just get actual work done, or watch Youtube efficiently without brittle configuration, no window manager bugs etc.
[0] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=244031&p=40
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1ey4n2k/heres_how_to...
In this past year, I've since moved to Windows after like 7 years of constantly messing and tweaking Linux to kinda sorta almost for some stretch of time get all the things to work after spending hours looking for the right configuration. Look at how long this thread is, for example[0]. Or here most saying it still doesn't work[1] and the flags constantly change. Before Linux I was about 6 yrs on Mac. I hadn't used Windows for so long, it actually felt weird to have so much hardware and software support for anything I ever need to use.
I'll take your word for it that Chromium sometimes uses hardware decoding now. But as you say, and they should put that slogan on a T-shirt: "Linux on Desktop: not officially supported and it has broken a lot over the past due to lack of support and quality of driver". I wouldn't really characterize that as "have no problem using". It feels nice to have a system that just works without all that hassle and tweaking so I can just get actual work done, or watch Youtube efficiently without brittle configuration, no window manager bugs etc.
[0] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=244031&p=40
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1ey4n2k/heres_how_to...
Check the Firefox video settings in about:config maybe?
Doing well on a recent AMD, although I didn't upgrade until about 6.10.7 or so.
There were problems on earlier kernels, but they were mostly fixed by a firmware update. Kernel already had support by that time.
There were problems on earlier kernels, but they were mostly fixed by a firmware update. Kernel already had support by that time.
amdgpu on my 6.10 kernel has been crashing constantly too. It makes me want to go back to Intel. My workaround has been to let the ryzen 7700 iGPU run at its max clockspeed of 2200 Mhz …
Yeah, same problems with 6.10 and amdgpu. Radeon Pro WX 3200 fwiw. I've been on 6.8.9 for several weeks now. Just today I booted 6.10.7 and it's been stable so far. I haven't tried to put the system to sleep yet, though.
This isn't the first time I've had problems with the stable kernel, though. A while back I had problems, also graphics related, with Intel i915 (my onboard graphics that I used before I got the AMD card). It took a while but it eventually got fixed. I haven't looked to see if there's a bug tracked for the AMD problem.
This isn't the first time I've had problems with the stable kernel, though. A while back I had problems, also graphics related, with Intel i915 (my onboard graphics that I used before I got the AMD card). It took a while but it eventually got fixed. I haven't looked to see if there's a bug tracked for the AMD problem.
6.10 broke my AMD 5700XT eGPU setup. Had to downgrade to 6.9
After I upgraded to a 7900XT it worked again.
After I upgraded to a 7900XT it worked again.
amdgpu is shit for me, my friend. Funny story: my headless server with a small Navi 1 workstation card (repurposed) couldn't be SSH'd into last week. Went and plugged in a monitor, rebooted, and the framebuffer got stuck during stage 1 while fsck'ing my disk. OK, I think to myself, it's probably taking a while to fsck after N boots, happens once every few months. Doesn't change for 48 hours. Turns out my machine had just run out its DHCP lease, so it had a new IP and I didn't realize it, which is why I couldn't log in. So I log in, and..
What was wrong? What actually happened was that on bootup, the amdgpu driver would panic and fault during boot exactly when fsck was happening, and the framebuffer would be stuck forever. So it just looked like a filesystem issue but in reality my graphics output was merely fubar; the system itself was otherwise fine tnough.
This is reliable and reproducible for me; it always faults at almost the exact same spot at boot every time, for this kernel version at least. In reality amdgpu has been unreliable for me for 5+ releases at this point on a card less than like 7 years old.
Really considering moving over to a small cheap nvidia card and just running Nouveau instead. At least then I might have a reliable framebuffer.
What was wrong? What actually happened was that on bootup, the amdgpu driver would panic and fault during boot exactly when fsck was happening, and the framebuffer would be stuck forever. So it just looked like a filesystem issue but in reality my graphics output was merely fubar; the system itself was otherwise fine tnough.
This is reliable and reproducible for me; it always faults at almost the exact same spot at boot every time, for this kernel version at least. In reality amdgpu has been unreliable for me for 5+ releases at this point on a card less than like 7 years old.
Really considering moving over to a small cheap nvidia card and just running Nouveau instead. At least then I might have a reliable framebuffer.
you can just blacklist amdgpu and use EFI/VGA buffer provided by bios
Early 6.10 somehow broke bluetooth audio for me, only letting me use HSP.
What GPU?
Yeah I've experienced a fair number crashes with 6.10 (multiple point releases) on my 680M. Earlier kernels were fine in my recollection although I didn't bother downgrading, and Windows remains rock solid on the same system.
Long way since Linux 3.11 for Workgroups [0]:
[0]: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/linux-kernel-3-11-...
[0]: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/linux-kernel-3-11-...
Man, time flies. I remember Slashdot's thread announcing it.
Linux versioning now is the worst kind of arbitrary! It's the web-browser "just iterate the number" method, but with the appearance of semantic versioning.
Linux versioning now is the worst kind of arbitrary! It's the web-browser "just iterate the number" method, but with the appearance of semantic versioning.
Linus does that on purpose, because he doesn't want people to put undue importance on any particular release.
https://lwn.net/Articles/781206/
> I'd like to point out (yet again) that we don't do feature-based releases, and that "5.0" doesn't mean anything more than that the 4.x numbers started getting big enough that I ran out of fingers and toes.
https://lwn.net/Articles/781206/
> I'd like to point out (yet again) that we don't do feature-based releases, and that "5.0" doesn't mean anything more than that the 4.x numbers started getting big enough that I ran out of fingers and toes.
Then just an ever increasing number like most browser do these days would make more sense.
I kind of like the year/release style. 2024.1, etc. Gives you some context for how old/new it is at a glance.
Or 54.1 for a shorter number.
What about he just continue doing what he is doing? We are talking about the most succesful open source project here
I'd argue KHTML could give Linux a run for its money for that title.
No way. KHTML is a cautionary tale of what happens when open source is coopted by corporate power. How can you call KHTML successful when it is dead, with its progeny in tight control of Google/Apple?
Because it formed the basis for essentially every web engine that is used today? I would call that successful.
(Before you say "but gecko!", take a look at the usage stats.)
(Before you say "but gecko!", take a look at the usage stats.)
Success is subjective. But I don't think it was an intention of KHTML developers to build a basis for corporate-controlled browsers and then die.
Linux versioning has always been that way.
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I’m just at awe to see Torvalds still publishing the release notes for Linux kernel.
Not only release notes, he's still actively contributing! From said release notes:
> Linus Torvalds (2):
> mm: avoid leaving partial pfn mappings around in error case
> Linux 6.11
> Linus Torvalds (2):
> mm: avoid leaving partial pfn mappings around in error case
> Linux 6.11
Wonder what kind of succession is in place. I'd assume there's a legal framework around it to ensure continuity with something so important.
I mean, it's GPL. If something were to happen to him, anyone could just start their own fork. There would likely be some competition between forks for a while before two or three emerge as the successors eventually.
Linux is basically a national security issue at this point with how much runs on it. Linus is an interesting dictator because he's not bound to any corporation. I think some kind of kernel throne wars would be terrible for the community and could result in Red Hat or some other corporate overlord owning the kernel (not literally because of trademarks but effectively through the release and mainline).
Yep. I imagine many Jia Tan's are lining up for dictator/maintenance roles.
Yes, but also most people would probably not want that to happen to the Linux kernel. That's why people wonder about contingencies.
“I'm still working on it. It's been 25 years. I can do this for another 25. I'll wear them down.” —Linus Torvalds
He's got at least another decade in him
Rejoice!
Edit: These two items are huge! support for writing block drivers in Rust, support for atomic write operations in the block layer,
Edit: These two items are huge! support for writing block drivers in Rust, support for atomic write operations in the block layer,
When will be the year of GNU/Linux for smartphones? Android is not it. I wish we could install distros in a smartphone as easy as it is in desktop
"As easy as in desktop" not going to happen anytime soon. Phone "bootloader firmwares" lack full description of phone hardware in stardartized form like PC ACPI does, expecting customized OS kernel to know the phone it's running on. Phone devices lack capability to emulate something ancient-but-standard, expecting customized OS to include drivers for all of them. That's enough to make unified OS images impossible.
Fighting against well known hardware on PCs is one thing, doing the same against mobile manufacturers because they refuse to release any documentation is a nightmare. Linux will have a hard time becoming a reality in the mobile world because of hardware manufacturers hostility, not for any of its faults. Pine64 had to design the PinePhone platform from scratch for this exact reason, still they encountered so many blocks that when it finally became available it was already too old.
Maybe FairPhone can do it eventually.
Nobody wants it outside of a tiny hobbyist segment.
Nobody understands it outside of a tiny hobbyist segment, because there is no "definitive" Linux. No two "Linux" look the same.
The year of the Linux desktop will be when there's an OS like Android or macOS that is running Linux but the only way you would tell is by running uname.
The year of the Linux desktop will be when there's an OS like Android or macOS that is running Linux but the only way you would tell is by running uname.
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Bets for 6.12: sched_ext, PREEMPT_RT anyone?
There's already a series posted a week ago for 6.12 that will ungate PREEMPT_RT on x86, ARM and RISC-V; it only modifies the Kconfig entries to enable it[1]. So I'd say it's hardly a bet!
[1] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20240906111841.562402-1-bigeasy@linut...
[1] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20240906111841.562402-1-bigeasy@linut...
PREEMPT_RT would be a boon for audio/video work, hope it finally goes in. Not everyone who needs it knows they need it, let alone how to compile it, and having it in-tree would massively simplify the process for distros to [re-]package a proper RT kernel.
These kind of schedulers often harm servers' I/O usage. And the opposite it's true too. Server based loads are bad for multimedia/gaming desktops.
Yes, that's why it's a config option; but if the code is in the kernel a distro can package up a preempt-rt kernel by flipping the config flag rather than maintaining an out-of-tree patchset, which is a _much_ lower burden.
Ah, TIL. I thought the -rt kernel was in mainline since mid 2000's.
PREEMPT_RT, please!!
Anyone here that can comment on the new snapdragon X support?
This is the latest news I could find about snapdragon support
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.11-SoC-Platforms
EDIT: looking at the tree of 6.11, these 2 laptops are still the only "supported"† ones
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...
† as in bootable, but still don't work fully (e.g. touchpad not working, battery monitoring not working, camera not working, usb/hdmi not working fully)
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.11-SoC-Platforms
EDIT: looking at the tree of 6.11, these 2 laptops are still the only "supported"† ones
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...
† as in bootable, but still don't work fully (e.g. touchpad not working, battery monitoring not working, camera not working, usb/hdmi not working fully)
Does anyone know how they'll implement the runtime constants?
Does this mean i can suspend my Linux laptop to ram now?
I thought the issue with this nowadays was that hardware support for suspend-to-ram has been increasingly removed from hardware.
At the same time, S3 sleep worked just fine on supported hardware 10 years ago. So what does suspend-to-ram have to do with Linux 6.11 in particular?
At the same time, S3 sleep worked just fine on supported hardware 10 years ago. So what does suspend-to-ram have to do with Linux 6.11 in particular?
Pretty vague question, suspend to ram has always worked for me on multiple random laptops
If you choose the right laptop, yes. Works for me.
Thinkpad L14 Gen 1, anybody care to take a guess?
You have no idea how little that narrows it down, there's an Intel and an AMD variant.
My apologies, it runs a 4750u amd processor.
That gen should still have "real" S3 sleep, with S2idle/S0ix (same thing, different name) being an option. I'd guess yes.
lol so the answer is "probably not".
[deleted]
Is suspend-to-ram something that often doesn't work on laptops with Linux, really? I used it on dozens and saw problems maybe once or twice. Though I usually pick ones which are 3+ years old.
The problem is that platforms are removing S3 and S2idle support wasn't great for a while. Those problems should be mostly resolved in 2024 though.
Can't wait for Ubuntu to drop this into the Oracular beta for a couple of days and pretend like that was tested before release.
Isn’t that the very definition of what an upcoming release should do?
Not at all. It is a poor pattern because they throw a kernel over the wall right before the freeze, then refuse to fix any of the bugs, because of the freeze.
The kernel should go out to general testing as soon as the cycle starts, not right before it ends.
The kernel should go out to general testing as soon as the cycle starts, not right before it ends.
Isn't that a large part of what makes Ubuntu Ubuntu?
7e(8)
Anyone else having similar experience? This is the first time something like that happened in a decade of using the latest stable kernel release (in my experience, it's actually been stable for all that time except for 6.10).