[$] Representing the true signatures of kernel functions
Optimizing compilers can, under some circumstances, infer when a parameter to a
function is not needed, and remove it. This is all well and good until the
kernel’s tracing or BPF subsystems need information on how to call the function
or where its arguments are stored.
Alan Maguire and Yonghong Song spoke at the 2026
Linux\
Storage, Filesystem, Memory-Management, and BPF Summit about their work on
recording information regarding c … ⌘ Read more

Dell Rivals Apple’s MacBook Neo With $699 Touchscreen XPS 13 Laptop
Dell has introduced a redesigned $699 XPS 13 aimed squarely at Apple’s budget MacBook Neo, offering a premium aluminum design, touch display, backlit keyboard, Wi-Fi 7, 512GB of base storage, and various other configuration options. Dell’s machine costs more than Apple’s entry model but tries to justify the difference with lighter weight, … ⌘ Read more

Renewable Energy is Surging in Africa
Almost a fifth of the earth’s population lives in Africa. And Africa’s next generation of power projects “is increasingly being built around solar and wind power and battery storage,” reports the Associated Press, “as governments and investors shift away from coal and large hydropower dams in search of cheaper, faster and more reliable electricity.”

The shift is visible in a $1.5 billion energy … ⌘ Read more

Energy Minister Simeon Brown opposes Meridian’s Pūkaki storage bid
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has made a late intervention opposing Meridian Energy’s fast-track application to use more water from Lake Pūkaki, warning the proposal in its current form could weaken the electricity system’s dry-year security while gas supply declines and wider market reforms remain unresolved.

The intervention puts the Government directly at odds with Meridian over one of the co … ⌘ Read more

[$] Policies for merging new filesystems
In a filesystem-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Amir Goldstein wanted to
discuss his proposed\
documentation on adding new filesystems to the kernel. There are a
number of unmaintained and untestable filesystems already in the kernel,
which are a burden to VFS-layer developers who are trying to make sweeping
changes, suc … ⌘ Read more

[$] Separating memory descriptors from struct page
The kernel’s memory-management subsystem is currently partway through a
multi-year project to replace the page structure (which represents
a page of physical memory) with memory\
descriptors. At the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Vishal Moola ran a
fast-paced session in the memory-management track to describe the current
state of that work and wha … ⌘ Read more

Andrew Morton’s 2004 OLS keynote
I recently presented a brief tribute to Andrew Morton at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory\
Management, and BPF Summit; it included a suggestion that reading (or
re-reading) his 2004 Ottawa Linux Symposium keynote would be instructive.
This talk, given immediately after the Kernel\
Summit session that decided to fundamentally change the kernel’s
development model, tells a lot about how the kernel project got to where … ⌘ Read more

15 Best Travel Toiletry Bags, Tested Over Many Miles (2026)
Our team evaluated a ton of toiletry bags to find the best storage, organization, and design options for all your essentials. ⌘ Read more

[$] Better automatic management of transparent huge pages
Huge pages can improve performance by increasing translation lookaside
buffer (TLB) utilization and reducing memory-management overhead.
Transparent huge pages (THPs) are supposed to make huge-page usage,
well, transparent, Nico Pache said at the beginning of his session in the
memory-management track of the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit. That transparency has
never worked as well as many wo … ⌘ Read more

[$] Reviewing kernel patches with LLMs
In a plenary session at
the
2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, the state of patch
review using large language models (LLMs) was discussed. It is a topic that has been swirling around in the
kernel community for much of the year. The plenary, which was led by Roman
Gushchin, Chris Mason, Josef Bacik, and Sasha Levin, resulted in a quite bit
of discussion, so much that a second fil … ⌘ Read more

[$] Tier-aware memory-controller limits
Joshua Hahn began his session in the memory-management track of the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit by saying that the memory
controller for control groups is intended to provide resource allocation,
accounting, and protection from interference by other tasks. But
it was not really designed for tiered-memory systems; he is looking for a
way to improve that situation. ⌘ Read more

[$] Custom page-cache policies with BPF
The kernel’s page cache is charged with maintaining pages (or, more
correctly, folios) containing copies of
data from files in the filesystem; its performance has a big effect on the
performance of the system as a whole. One of the key decisions the kernel
must make is when to evict folios from the page cache. At the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Tal Zussman ran a
memory-ma … ⌘ Read more

[$] Toward better handling of major page faults
A major page fault occurs when a process attempts to access a page that is
not currently present in RAM; satisfying such faults usually involves I/O, and can thus take some time. When many threads
sharing an address space are generating page faults, the result can be
significant lock contention while that I/O
takes place. During the memory-management track at the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Barry Son … ⌘ Read more

Mustard Made Storage Lockers Are on a Rare Sale Through May 31
We love this brand’s stylish storage lockers, and there’s a big sale on eight colors through the end of the month. ⌘ Read more

[$] BPF support in GCC 16 and beyond
José Marchesi and the GCC-BPF developers opened the BPF track at the 2026
Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory-management, and BPF Summit
with a 90-minute summary of what has changed for GCC’s BPF support in the past year.
This kind of session has become something of a tradition. There were similar
updates in
2025 and
2024. This time around, GCC seems to be closing in on
feature p … ⌘ Read more

[$] Support for private memory nodes
Gregory Price started his session in the memory-management track of the
2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit by saying that, in
current kernels, if a NUMA node has memory, the assumption is that anybody can
make use of it. He is trying to implement the opposite policy — to make
some memory off-limits for all processes except those designed specifically
to use it. The session was used to present his goals and to discuss h … ⌘ Read more

Seagate Sparks Memory Sell-Off As CEO Says It Would ‘Take Too Long’ To Build New Factories
Seagate CEO Dave Mosley said Monday that building new memory chip factories or adding capacity would “take too long” to keep up with AI-driven storage demand. “If we took the teams off and started building new factories or bringing up new machines, that would just take too long. You would end … ⌘ Read more

[$] What is to be done about MGLRU?
“Reclaim” is the task of finding memory that can be taken away from its
current user and put to better uses within the system; it is a core part of
the memory-management picture. The addition of the multi-generational LRU (MGLRU) was meant to
provide a better reclaim implementation than the “traditional LRU” that
preceded it, but MGLRU has complicated the situation instead. No fewer than
three memory-management-track sessions at the 2026 [Linux Storage,\
Filesyst … ⌘ Read more

Everything to Look for When Buying a New Laptop in 2026
Shopping for a laptop can be infuriating. Here’s how to sift through the acronyms, storage options, and extra features to find the best one for you. ⌘ Read more

[$] In search of faster this_cpu operations
The kernel’s this_cpu\
operations are meant to speed access to per-CPU variables. They are
more optimal on some CPUs than others, though. During a
memory-management-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Yang Shi proposed a
fundamental, and somewhat controversial, change to how these operations
work in order to provide better performance on … ⌘ Read more

[$] What’s brewing in CXL
Compute\
Express Link (CXL) is a technology intended to enable the provision of
“memory nodes” in data centers that provide (possibly shared) memory to
nearby CPUs. It has, Dan Williams said at the beginning of his
memory-management-track session on the topic at the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, “been making
memory-management problems worse since 2021”. He used the sessi … ⌘ Read more

[$] Improving the per-CPU memory allocator
There are many places in the kernel where performance can be improved by
using per-CPU data. But, as it turns out, the kernel’s allocator for
per-CPU data has some performance problems of its own. Harry Yoo led a
session in the memory-management track of the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit to explore ways to
address those problems and accelerate the allocation and initialization of
per-CPU data. ⌘ Read more

[$] Swap tables, flash-friendly swap, swap_ops, and more
The kernel’s swap subsystem is charged with managing anonymous pages in
secondary storage when those pages are (hopefully) not being used and the
memory they occupy is needed elsewhere. This long-unloved subsystem has
seen a resurgence of developer interest in recent times, so it is not
surprising that it was the topic of three separate sessions in the
memory-management track at the
2026 [Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit](https://events.linuxfoundat … ⌘ Read more

After Struggling With EVs, US Automakers Pivot to Energy
Ford and GM are backing away from electric vehicles and moving into the battery storage business. And it all comes back to AI. ⌘ Read more

Kioxia and Dell Cram Nearly 10PB Into a Single 2U Server
BrianFagioli writes: Kioxia and Dell Technologies say they have built a 2U server configuration capable of scaling to 9.8PB of flash storage, which is the sort of density that would have sounded impossible just a few years ago. The setup combines a Dell PowerEdge R7725xd Server with 40 Kioxia LC9 Series 245.76TB NVMe SSDs and AMD EPYC processors. According t … ⌘ Read more

The Era of 15GB Free Gmail Storage Is Ending
Google has confirmed it is testing a 5GB storage limit for some new Gmail accounts, with users able to unlock the standard 15GB by adding a phone number. Android Authority reports: While the company didn’t mention which regions are impacted, user reports from yesterday were mostly from African countries. That said, if Google’s tests prove successful, this could possibly become the norm … ⌘ Read more

[$] Controlling memory-management with BPF
Roman Gushchin began his session in the memory-management track of the
2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit by saying that the
community has seen a lot of proposals adding BPF-based interfaces for
memory management. None of them have made their way into the mainline,
though. He wanted to explore the ways in which BPF might be helpful and
the obstacles that have kept BPF-based solutions out so far. This session
was … ⌘ Read more

[$] HugeTLB preservation over live update
Recent times have seen a lot of effort put into the implementation of the kexec handover and live update orchestrator
features in the Linux kernel. But that work is not yet complete. At the
2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Pratyush Yadav led a
memory-management-track session on adding the ability to preserve [hugetlbfs](https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.html … ⌘ Read more

ZimaCube 2 Makes For A Nice Personal Cloud/NAS With Power Of Linux + Intel CPU
Earlier this year we reviewed the ZimaBoard 2 for building a Linux home storage server. That was a nifty little device but for those looking for a more polished product than assembling your storage devices in cardboard cut-outs and the like, IceWhale has launched the ZimaCube 2. The ZimaCube 2 is a nice and polished, literal cube, to serve as your personal cloud / network attached storage (NAS) device. ⌘ Read more

[$] Policy groups for memory management
The kernel’s control-group\
subsystem works well for resource management, Chris Li said at the
beginning of his memory-management-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit. Control groups work
less well for other use cases, though. He was there to present his
proposed enhancement, called “policy groups”, that would address some of
the shortcomings t … ⌘ Read more

[$] Buffered atomic writes, writethrough, and more
In back-to-back sessions at the start of the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit (which spilled over into
a third slot), the atomic-buffered-writes\
feature was discussed. In the first session, Pankaj Raghav and Andres
Freund set the stage with an introduction to the problem, along with a use
case for its solution: the PostgreSQL database system. In the second, Ojaswin … ⌘ Read more

[$] Keeping COWs in context (a.k.a. anonymous reverse mapping)
The kernel’s reverse-mapping machinery is charged with locating the
page-table entries that refer to a given page in memory. The reverse
mapping of anonymous pages is handled differently than for file-backed
pages. The kernel’s implementation of reverse mapping for anonymous pages
is, according to Lorenzo Stoakes in his proposal
for a memory-management-track session at the 2026 [Linux Storage,\
 … ⌘ Read more

SOLAI Launches $399 Solode Neo Linux AI Computer
BrianFagioli writes: SOLAI has launched the Solode Neo, a $399 Linux-based mini PC designed for always-on AI agents, browser automation, and persistent developer workflows. The compact system ships with an Intel N150 processor, 12GB LPDDR5 memory, 128GB SSD storage, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a Linux-based operating system called Solode AI OS. The company says th … ⌘ Read more

[$] Managing pages outside of the direct map
When Brendan Jackman proposed
a session for the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, his topic was “a
pagetable library for the kernel”. During the actual
memory-management-track session, though, he stated that the idea had
“fizzled” and he was going to cover related topics instead. What
resulted was a session on ways to efficiently mana … ⌘ Read more

Our storage box is not reachable for hours, the support response is unhelpful to say the least. Let’s see how long it takes them to actually fix this. Until then, no photo galleries etc. available.

[$] Using dma-bufs for read and write operations
The kernel’s dma-buf\
subsystem provides a way for drivers to share memory buffers, usually
in order to support efficient device-to-device I/O. At the 2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Pavel Begunkov, assisted
by Kanchan Joshi, led a joint session of the storage and memory-management
tracks to explore ways to make the use of dma-bufs more efficient yet, a … ⌘ Read more

[$] Scaling transparent huge pages to 1GB
As a general rule, when developers talk about huge pages, they are
referring to PMD-level pages that are 1MB or 2MB in size, depending on the
CPU architecture. Most CPUs can support other huge-page sizes, though. On
x86 systems, PUD-level huge pages hold 1GB of data. Providing such large
pages transparently to processes has generally not been considered as
either feasible or desirable, but Usama Arif is trying to change that
assessment. At the 2026 [Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Manageme … ⌘ Read more

[$] Providing 64KB base pages with 4KB kernels, two different ways
Some CPU architectures are able to run with a number of different base-page
sizes; using a larger size can often result in better performance at the
cost of increased memory use. Other architectures are more limited. At
the 2026 Linux\
Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, two sessions in
the memory-management track explored options for letting processes run with
64KB page sizes when the underlying kern … ⌘ Read more

Axboe Hacking On New Linux Patches For 60% Increase To Per-Core I/O Performance
Following a presentation at last week’s Linux storage, file-system, memory management and BPF summit (LSFMM) in Croatia where Linux I/O overhead compared to the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) was presented, Jens Axboe was motivated to pursue some new Linux kernel optimizations for greater per-core I/O performance. This lead IO_uring developer and Linux block maintainer has managed to achieve around a 60% increase to … ⌘ Read more

AI Hard Drive Shortage Makes Archiving the Internet Harder
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Skyrocketing hard drive and storage costs caused by the AI data center boom are making it more expensive and more difficult for digital archivists, academics, Wikipedia, and hobby data hoarders to save data and archive the internet. Specific drives favored by some high profile organizations like the Int … ⌘ Read more

[$] A 2026 DAMON update
The kernel’s DAMON subsystem
provides user-space monitoring and management of system memory. DAMON is
developing rapidly, so an update on its progress has become a regular
feature of the annual Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit. This tradition
continued at the 2026 gathering with an update from DAMON creator SeongJae
Park covering a long list of new capabilities — tiering, data attribute … ⌘ Read more

Motherboard Sales ‘Collapse’ By More Than 25%
Motherboard sales are sharply declining as AI demand drives shortages and price hikes for memory, storage, CPUs, and other PC components. “Because of this, users who don’t have deep pockets are putting off upgrading their PCs and holding on to their current devices longer,” reports Tom’s Hardware. From the report: Asus, which sold 15 million motherboards in 2025, has only shipped a … ⌘ Read more

[$] A new era for memory-management maintainership
On April 21, Andrew Morton let\
it be known that he intends to begin stepping away from the
maintainership of kernel’s memory-management subsystem — a responsibility
he has carried since before memory management was even seen as its own
subsystem. At the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and
BPF Summit, one of the first sessions in the memory-management track was
devoted to how the … ⌘ Read more

ReactOS Introduces Unified Live/Install Media, New Storage Driver
ReactOS as the “open-source Windows” operating system project striving for binary compatibility with Microsoft Windows has seen some exciting improvements this week… ⌘ Read more

Red Hat’s Stratis Storage 3.9 Released With Online Encryption/Decryption/Reencryption
It’s crazy to realize it has been ten years already since Red Hat abandoned their Btrfs plans for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and dropped it, which was a technology preview feature since RHEL6. In its place Red Hat engineers began developing Stratis for next-gen Linux storage with ZFS/Btrfs-like features but instead building atop XFS, LUKS, Device Mapper, and Clevis. After a while since the last major release, Stratis Storage 3 … ⌘ Read more

Oracle To Reduce The Frequency Of Solaris 11.4 Updates
Oracle announced today they are going to be reducing the frequency of software updates for Solaris 11.4 and their ZFS Storage Appliance software… ⌘ Read more

[$] Famfs, FUSE, and BPF
The famfs filesystem first showed up on the\
mailing lists in early 2024; since then, it has been the topic of
regular discussions at the Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management and
BPF (LSFMM+BPF) Summit. It has also, as result of those discussions, been
through some significant changes since that initial posting. So it is not
surprising that a suggestion that it needed to be rewritten yet again was
not entirely well received. How much more … ⌘ Read more

A 40-year-old storage company just beat Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Atlassian
Atlassian posted its strongest quarter ever, then got kicked out of the Nasdaq 100. The market has stopped rewarding software and started paying for storage. ⌘ Read more

Remembering Zip Drives - the Trendy Storage Technology of the 1990s
Back in the 1990s, floppy disks “had a mere capacity of 1.44MB,” remembers XDA Developers, “which would soon become absolutely tiny for the increasingly large pieces of software that would come about.”

Floppy disks also felt quite fragile, and while we got “superfloppy” formats that were physically larger and had more capacity, those w … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Sees RAID Fixes, IO_uring Enhancements
The block subsystem and IO_uring changes were merged this week for Linux 7.1 in continuing to enhance Linux storage capabilities… ⌘ Read more