Keynote: The Kernel Report
summary
Seven kernel releases in ~12 months, each driven by 1,700 developers and ~13,000 changes, with the 9–10 week cadence interrupted when 4.15 is delayed 11 weeks by Meltdown/Spectre work. Meltdown fixes (KPTI) evolve in public and converge across distributors; Spectre fixes are developed in secrecy, causing fragmentation, burnout and uneven vendor responses. BPF grows from packet filter to a general tool with BPF verifier and JIT, XDP and BPFilter reshaping where protocol work runs and blurring the kernel/user boundary. Stable kernels face huge backports, regressions and extended LTS commitments (4.4→2022, 4.9→2023) while a code of conduct formalizes contributor behavior.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00The kernel report
- 1:47Handling of hardware vulnerabilities They look like software vulnerabilities We have a process for those!
- 2:25What happened?
- 2:55Consequences
- 3:16Let's compare
- 6:55The bad news
- 8:39Current stable kernels
- 9:12stable initiatives
- 10:54stable problems
- 12:46The solution?
- 13:32One little problem...
- 14:10BPF An in-kernel virtual machine
- 14:52Where BPF shows up
- 17:41Pushing code to user space
- 20:35The Good Olde Days
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