Everything was perfect and habemus kernel: Linus Torvalds just launched linux 5.14, the new version of the kernel that develops that, except capital surprise, will be the one that uses the Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri that will be released within a month and a half. A lot of work has been done, but it has not seemed like it, at least if we consider that everything has been rolled from the beginning.
Although a lot has been added, from the following list I might highlight that support for the Raspberry Pi 400 has been added to the main kernel. As always, from here to thank Michael Larabel the data collection work, in this case of the most outstanding news Linux 5.14.
Linux 5.14 Highlights
- Processors:
- VirtIO-IOMMU support on x86, whereas previously it was only compatible with AArch64.
- There is now support for various ARM SoCs.
- More kernel features now supported in RISC-V like transparent hugepages and KFENCE.
- Support for ACPI CPPC CPUFreq frequency invariance.
- The x86 FPU code has been cleaned up a lot.
- Preparing more OpenRISC LiteX drivers for future incorporation.
- Continuation of the fine-tuning around Intel Alder Lake and the hybrid CPU concept.
- Added support for Microwatt POWER soft CPU cores.
- ARM64 preparation for some CPU cores that do not support 32-bit execution.
- Changes to RAS / EDAC regarding Intel's support for HBM memory built into future Xeon CPUs.
- Intel TSX deactivation by default on more CPUs.
- Display / Graphics:
- Added a Microsoft Hyper-V display driver.
- SimpleDRM was merged.
- Support for AMD Yellow Carp.
- Support for AMD Beige Goby has been added.
- Support for Intel Alder Lake P.
- Hot-plugging the AMDGPU should now work.
- 16 bpc display support for AMDGPU.
- PCIe ASPM is enabled by default on AMDGPU.
- Support for AMD Smart Shift laptops.
- Hantro VPU driver support for G2 decoder.
- Many other open source graphics / display updates.
- Laptops:
- AMD SFH support for light sensor and human presence detection with the new AMD Ryzen notebooks.
- Support for Dell Hardware Privacy notebooks.
- A performance solution for the Intel ISST controller with some HPC benchmarks.
- Other improvements in compatibility with Linux laptops.
- Support for changing Lenovo ThinkPad BIOS settings within Linux.
- Other hardware:
- Support for Raspberry Pi 400 with the main kernel.
- Lower latency for the USB audio controller.
- Many improvements to the Habana Labs AI controller for its Goya and Gaudí accelerators.
- Support for the select / share button on the Microsoft Xbox One controller.
- SparkFun Qwiic joystick support via new controller such as ~ $ 10 open source joystick for DIY electronics.
- Improvements in USB4 support.
- New Alder Lake M sound hardware support to various other sound chips.
- More work on CXL support, Compute Express Link.
- Intel has revised and replaced its RDMA driver.
- Support for MIPS IoT.
- Many network driver updates.
- Storage / File Systems:
- Improvements in F2FS.
- Improved exFAT compatibility with some digital camera file system implementations.
- Improvements in the manager of distributed locks.
- EXT4 has a new option to help prevent potential leaks of journal information.
- Cleanups for XFS.
- Support of the new features of the SD specification.
- More performance tweaks for Btrfs.
- Security: Support for secret memory areas through memfd_secret.
- Others:
- RAW driver removal.
- Hyper-V enhancements and other KVM work.
- Various changes in the staging.
- The OSNoise tracer to help track operating system noise and also improvements to HWLAT for debugging hardware latency.
- Upgrade Preparations for Intel Alder Lake / Hybrid CPUs.
- Initial support for the ACPI platform execution mechanism.
- Programmable button support for HID input controller.
- Removed IDE code inherited from Linux.
Linux 5.14 can now be downloaded, but at the moment you have to install it manually or using a tool like Ubuntu Mainline Kernel Installer, a fork of Ukuu. Canonical will add it to Ubuntu on October 14.