221
Systemd 254 - now with soft-reboot
(github.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
221 points (97.8% liked)
Linux
48035 readers
759 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
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Does that mean we will be able to update graphics drivers without a full reboot if the kernel didn't update?
I don't think any graphics drivers run in user-space, so probably not.
Kernel space..
GNU Hurd.. Hurt.. 😂
Yes they do, Mesa being one. Only the close to the metal stuff and Kernel-DRM is handled in kernel space, most of the heavy stuff is done in user space.
Where's the line you're drawing? And what would be the "heavy stuff" in user-space?
I'm far from a kernel expert, but I still have the
i915module loaded into the kernel on this bad boy, which I think most people would call a driver.The heavy stuff would be things like shader compilation and state management for multiple different graphics APIs (OpenGL and Vulkan mostly).
AFAIK Linux graphics drivers are usually separated into a userspace and a kernel space component, like
amdgpuon the kernel side and RADV/RadeonSI within Mesa on the userspace side. So you do not need to do a full reboot to e.g. benefit from performance optimizations within Mesa to get things like faster shader compilation or more efficient draw call submission, which I think most people care about when doing driver updates. In fact you don't even need to soft reboot, because once Mesa is updated, all following uses of it already run the new version, all without a reboot. However if your GPU is not yet supported by the kernel side, then Mesa is of no use to you.That being said, yes the kernel side is a very important part of the driver, but it's such a low-level driver that very few people would be able to do much of anything with it, which is why I made that distinction.
True. Dammit.
You could always do that. If you update Mesa, any applications you start after updating will use the new version of Mesa
Oh? I thought I'd at least have to reload a kernel module or something.