Linux is scheduled to release a major version update this Sunday (August 29), which will lay a solid foundation for security and performance for enterprise and cloud applications in the next few months. According to the official announcement, Linux 5.14 will bring many new features.
Mike McGrath, Vice President of Developing for Red Hat Linux, pointed out that it includes a new feature called core schedule that aims to alleviate the processor level including Spectre and Meltdown that began to be exposed in 2018. The underlying hardware vulnerabilities.
In order to alleviate the processor vulnerabilities with serious security risks, one of the methods is to disable the CPU’s hyper-threading function, but this will slow down the system performance. McGrath explained:
More precisely, this move helps to split trusted and untrusted tasks so that they no longer share the core, thereby limiting the overall threat exposure, while keeping the cloud-scale performance relatively unchanged.
Another security innovation of Linux 5.14 is the development of a feature that helps protect system memory better than before. For attacks on Linux and other operating systems, memory is usually the primary target of attack. But in the new kernel, Linux 5.14 will introduce a new feature called memfd_secret ().
This allows applications running on a Linux system to create a range of memory that cannot be accessed by any other process (including the kernel). By limiting the exposure of other users or system activities, means that encryption keys, sensitive data, and other confidential information can be stored in a specific memory area with greater confidence.
Thanks to the contributions of 1650 different developers, the Linux 5.14 kernel has gone through seven release candidates in the past 2 months. In addition to individual contributors, technology giants including Intel, AMD, IBM, Oracle, and Samsung also provided strong support.
It is reported that IBM completed a $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat in 2019. Mike McGrath, vice president of Red Hat Linux, added:
Like almost every kernel version, we have also seen some very innovative new features in Linux 5.14. Today, Linux has become a powerful pillar of the modern cloud business, and Red Hat is also excited about the prospect of edge computing. Looking to the future, in addition to telecommunications, it will also cover all industries from manufacturing, healthcare, to entertainment and service providers.
In addition, in the opinion of Gerald Pfeifer, CTO of enterprise Linux developer SUSE, thanks to the unprecedented potential for innovation in the open-source field, coupled with openness and independence, Linux has laid an important foundation for the next 30 years.
