The kernel needed a fix and Linus provided a patch

Jan 23, 2015 15:43 GMT  ·  By

Linus Torvalds is not known to interfere with other projects than the Linux kernel and it must be something really special to get him involved. Well, it looks like the Linux port of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings proved to be interesting enough.

There has been quite a debate around The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and the fact that it wasn't really a port. A special kind of wrapper was used to make the Windows version of the game run on Linux systems, similar with Wine. As you can imagine, the performance on Linux systems took a hit and users felt betrayed because they thought that they would get a native port.

The game was a mess right after launch and it has problems running on many systems. It didn't even work on AMD video cards. A few patches were released since then and some improvements were made. Even the AMD guys pitched in and made some fixes in their drivers. From the looks of it, the Linux kernel was also responsible for some of the problems and that's something quite important for Linus Torvalds.

Do not break user space

This is one of the mantras of Linux kernel development and it's been repeated ad nauseam by Linus Torvalds. Basically, it means that developers should not have to work around stuff that can be fixed in the kernel and that kernel developers should not make changes that would force app developers to adjust their work.

This is the reason why Linus Torvalds left a message on GitHub, on one of the topics for Witcher 2 in which he explained that a problem which needed to be solved by the game developers was actually in the kernel, and that he would write a patch for it.

"It looks like LDT_empty is buggy on 64-bit kernels. I suspect that the behavior was inconsistent before the tightening change and that it's now broken as a result. I'll write a patch. Serves me right for not digging all the way down the mess of macros," wrote Linus on GitHub.

The conversation is rather technical, but you can try to read it nonetheless.