With Kolivas (programmer who has worked on the Linux kernel and on the development of the CGMiner mining software) made it known Few days ago your intention to stop developing your projects on the Linux kernel intended to make user tasks more responsive and interactive.
In particular mention that will stop all development related to task scheduler MuQSS (Multiple Queue Skiplist Scheduler, previously developed under the name BFS) y the adaptation of the set of patches "-ck" for new kernel versions.
The reason for said intention is due to loss of interest in developing for the Linux kernel after 20 years of activities similarities and the inability to regain previous motivation after returning to medical activities during the Covid19 pandemic (by education, Kon is an anesthesiologist and during the pandemic he led a project to develop a new ventilator design and the use of 3D printing to create parts related).
It is noteworthy that in 2007 with Kolivas he had already stopped developing the patches "-Ck" in the context of the inability to promote your patches to the main kernel Linux, but then went back to development.
But now mention that if this time you don't find the motivation to continue working, then the 5.12-ck1 patch release will be the last.
The size of my user base seems to be decreasing over time, and I am moving further and further away from what is happening in the Linux kernel space, with countless other things worrying me in my spare time.
As much as I still prefer to run my own kernel on my hardware, I am having trouble getting motivated after the last 18 months of global insanity due to Covid19 and I feel like I should really bring this set of patches to a graceful end. My first Linux kernel patches date back 20 years and, with almost no passion to work on them, I think they may be way overdue.
Unfortunately, I also have no faith that there is someone to whom I can reliably hand over the code as a successor, as almost all the forks that I have seen in my work have been prone to issues that I have tried to avoid.
The "-ck" patches, in addition to the programmer MuQSS, that the development of the BFS project continues, include various changes that affect memory management, priority handling, timer interrupt generation, and kernel tuning.
The key objective of patches is to improve the responsiveness of applications on the desktop. Since the proposed changes can negatively affect the performance of server systems, computers with a large number of CPU cores and operating under conditions of simultaneous execution of a large number of processes, many of the changes of Con Colivas were refused to be accepted into the main composition of the kernel and had to keep them in the form of a separate set of patches, adaptable to each new version of the kernel.
The last update of the "-ck" branch was the adaptation for version 5.12 kernel. The release of the "-ck" patches for the 5.13 kernel was skipped and after the 5.14 kernel was released, the intention was to stop the migration to newer versions of the kernel.
Probably the Liquorix and Xanmod projects, which already use developments of the set «-ck», they will be able to take over from patch maintenance.
With Kolivas you are willing to transfer maintenance from patches to other hands, but you don't think this is a good solutionas all previous attempts to create forks have led to problems that you tried to avoid.
For users who want to take full advantage of the main Linux kernel without porting the MuQSS scheduler to it, Con Kolivas believes that the easiest and most efficient way to do this is to move patches to increase the HZ interrupt generation rate to 1000Hz.
Finally sIf you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details In the following link.