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back to article I want life to be boring, says Linus Torvalds as Linux 4.15 debuts

Linus Torvalds has hit the Go button on version 4.15 of the Linux kernel, blaming the Meltdown and Spectre CPU design flaws for the delay and warning of more pain to come as fixes trickle out for silicon architectures. “This obviously was not a pleasant release cycle, with the whole meltdown/spectre thing coming in in the …

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  1. Barry Rueger

    Retpoline

    If, like me, you wanted to know what retpoline is, and why it matters.

    23 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Retpoline

      You have made my brain hurt. Are you happy now?

      15 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Retpoline

      Did they bounce the idea around before they settled on retpoline?

      14 0 Reply
      1. bazza Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Retpoline

        Apparently they got the idea from John Lewis.

        0 1 Reply
    3. oiseau
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: Retpoline

      Hello:

      Reptoline?

      Sounds like the kind of stuff you'll get prescribed if you suffer chronic functional constipation.

      Which seems to be the situation for many PCs/Servers out there.

      Cheers.

      2 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Retpoline

        I would have said it sounds like a hotline for the snakes, crocodiles and lizards.

        2 0 Reply
        1. Tigra 07
          Reply Icon

          Re: Retpoline

          Sounds like a repair company for trampolines...

          "Return your trampoline to full health with Retpoline!"

          4 0 Reply
  2. HmmmYes

    You might want to drop the UC 'W' from 'merge Window'...

    5 0 Reply
  3. Paul Herber Silver badge

    Whenever I see a word like that I want to see what it spells backwards. Nothing interesting in this case. Mind you, maybe it's about time someone invented an enilopter. Yes, I want one now.

    12 0 Reply
    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      Now you have me interested. I want to see an enilopter. I really do.

      5 0 Reply
      1. Paul Herber Silver badge
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        New. Shiny, Me. Want. Now.

        4 0 Reply
    2. ArrZarr Silver badge
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      Enilopter: The term describing when your virtual helicopter disappears.

      4 0 Reply
  4. Bronek Kozicki

    Yay for ArchLinux

    Thanks to a really, really small patchset in the distribution itself, it is trivially simple to build my own Linux kernel straight from www.kernel.org and with my own configuration. Even better, thanks to following GCC releases really fast, my kernel is now reporting this: "Mitigation: Full generic reptoline". And I am running 4.14.15 - but I bet the distribution will make kernel 4.15 available in the next few weeks (or I can just roll my own - not tempted though, just yet)

    2 2 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yay for ArchLinux

      Fedora 27 also showing the same result, but spectre_v1 still vulnerable.

      0 0 Reply
      1. Bronek Kozicki
        Reply Icon

        Re: Yay for ArchLinux

        I am not living under the impression that my computer is not vulnerable to spectre v1. But there is very little I can do about it. I am simply happy that living on the bleeding edge of both kernel and compiler development has, at least once, given me some real benefits. Few distributions make this easy and most are lagging behind, sometimes quite significantly.

        1 0 Reply
  5. Dazed and Confused

    Tell it like it is

    > cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v2

    Oh the joy of not needing to keep a marketing department on board.

    15 0 Reply
    1. Down not across
      Reply Icon

      Re: Tell it like it is

      > cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v2

      Oh the joy of not needing to keep a marketing department on board.

      Yes. Marketing would insist on substituting "features" for "vulnerabilities".

      1 0 Reply

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