Linus Torvalds rarely writes significant amounts kernel code these days, so
the <a
href="https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=22a78a25438d">merging</a>
of a 48-part patch series from him is an unusual event. This series,
destined for the 7.4 kernel release, performs some long-delayed kernel
cleanup by removing a couple of the primitives used to access user-space memory
from the kernel. What was once a best practice has long been superseded,
but it can take time for such changes to work their way through a body of
code this large.