A hot potato: Linus Torvalds is sick and tired of trying to “fix” Linux to work on Intel’s faulty processors. In his view, Linux isn’t broken, so why should he (and other FOSS developers) fix anything? Intel is the one with the problems. He vented his ire in a thread recently.
Linux Creator Linus Torvalds recently expressed frustration with change proposals to the Linux kernel that are only “required” due to faulty hardware. Phoronix notes that Torvalds ranted on the Linux kernel mailing list over the last week, saying that buggy hardware should not be Linux’s problem, suggesting kernel developers just say “no” and see what the “hardware people” say.
“I think this time we push back on the hardware people and tell them it’s *THEIR* damn problem, and if they can’t even be bothered to say yay-or-nay, we just sit tight,” Torvalds said. “Because dammit, let’s put the onus on where the blame lies, and not just take any random shit from bad hardware and say ‘oh, but it *might* be a problem’ [sic].”
He’s also unhappy about kernel commits that address theoretical vulnerabilities, especially those that are difficult to implement and have never been seen in the wild.
“Honestly, I’m pretty damn fed up with buggy hardware and completely theoretical attacks that have never actually shown themselves to be used in practice,” he said.
Linus Torvalds Growing Frustrated By Buggy Hardware & Theoretical CPU Attacks
– Phoronix (@phoronix) October 21, 2024
Part of the problem is that addressing hardware faults at the OS level complicates matters for developers and creates potential compatibility problems with other fault-free hardware. An example would be proposed kernel changes that will not work with Linear Address Masking (LAM) on Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake processors, which is what got Torvalds fired up in the first place. This feature allows user space to store metadata in some bits of pointers.
According to Intel Engineer Kirill Shitemov, Intel is replacing LAM with LASS (Linear Address Space Separation), which is more secure as it prevents hackers from accessing virtual address spaces across user/kernel mode. Shitemov indicated that there was supposed to be a patch that disabled LAM until LASS was ready for implementation, but the fix “never got applied for some reason.”
Since earlier this year, Intel’s 13th and 14th-gen issues have caused headaches on many levels with consumers, developers, and within Intel. The company has addressed the problems with recommended BIOS settings and microcode to varying degrees of success. Couple that with the long-running issue of Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities, which keep making headlines even six years after their discovery.
The problem, as Torvalds sees it, is that Intel can afford to pay its engineers to address its hardware issues. Meanwhile, FOSS developers are unpaid volunteers who are under increasing pressure to get Linux working on bad hardware while keeping it bug-free on good hardware. So, his frustration is understandable. Of course, Torvalds has never shied away from telling hardware OEMs where they can go.