Linux 6.1 introduces the Rust infrastructure and these other new features

Linux 6.1

As expected, Linus Torvalds launched us Linux 6.1. It is a new stable version, and as such, it comes with interesting news. As in each and every one of the releases, support for new hardware has been included, but if this version has to go down in history for something, that something will be for adding the initial support for Rust. There's no actual code, but the foundation is already here.

This was reported by Torvalds himself in the first Release Candidate of Linux 6.1, specifically when he said that "we have some basic things that have been in the making for a long time, most notably the multi-gene LRU VM series, and the initial Rust scaffolding (no actual Rust code in the kernel yet, but the infrastructure is there).” With the stable version already available, it's time to talk about its news.

Linux 6.1 Highlights

La News list most notable is:

  • Processors:
    • The IBM POWER/PowerPC code has KFENCE for 64-bit, among other new features.
    • The LoongArch CPU port brings TLB/cache code review, QSpinLock support, EFI boot, perf event support, Kexec handling, eBPF JIT support, and several other features to this Chinese CPU architecture.
    • BF16 support for Cortex-A510 processors is being dropped due to a hardware issue that cannot be resolved on Linux.
    • AMD IOMMU v2 page table job as part of AMD vIOMMU hardware-assisted IOMMU virtualization for EPYC 7002 "Rome" processors and newer.
    • AMD CPU cache and memory reports with AMD perf and newer processors and LbrExtV2 support for Zen 4 CPUs.
    • The AMD Platform Management Framework (PMF) has been merged for better thermal/power/noise management with next generation AMD Ryzen devices.
    • Support for new ARM SoCs and various new ARM devices.
    • Faster Intel memory error decoding.
    • AMD P-State and s2idle fixes for AMD Rembrandt laptops.
    • Support on ARM to disable Specter-BHB mitigation at runtime due to high performance cost.
  • graphics and GPUs:
    • Intel Meteor Lake enablement continued.
    • Improved Intel GPU firmware handling.
    • Various improvements to Intel Arc Graphics DG2/Alchemist.
    • Support for AMDGPU gang submit which is required by the RADV Vulkan driver for proper mesh shader support.
    • Mode2 reset support for RX 2 series RDNA6000 GPUs.
  • Storage and file systems:
    • The default configuration of the RISC-V kernel allows several CD-ROM image formats.
    • FSCache-based shared domain support for EROFS with container use cases as an initial target.
    • EXT4 performance fixes and optimizations.
    • Significant performance optimizations for Btrfs and other work for this increasingly used Linux file system.
    • Support for statx() to report direct I/O alignment details.
  • Other hardware:
    • Automatic detection of Logitech HID++ Hi-Res Scrolling support and attempt to enable HID++ for all Logitech Bluetooth devices.
    • Notable addition of sound support with AMD Rembrandt added to Sound Open Firmware code, new AMD “Pink Sardine” audio coprocessor support, and new Apple MCA SoC driver for sound support on new Apple Silicon devices.
    • WiFi Extremely High Throughput (EHT) and Multi-Link Operation (MLO) preparations for WiFi 802.11be and WiFi 7.
    • Continuation of the enablement of Intel Habana Labs Gaudi2 for that next generation AI accelerator.
    • An input controller for the IBM Operation Panel.
    • Added a PINE64 PinePhone (Pro) keyboard case driver for Linux input.
    • Support for Intel Meteor Lake Thunderbolt.
    • End-to-end USB4 flow control support with Linux kernel Thunderbolt network driver.
    • Better handling of "cheap clones" Nintendo controllers.
    • New media drivers and two existing drivers were promoted out of the staging.
    • Various additions of hardware monitoring drivers.
  • Virtualization:
    • Xen now supports grant-based VirtIO for x86_64.
    • Support for "secure erase" of VirtIO blocks as well as support for provisioning of vDPA features.
    • Faster file sharing between host and guest VMs for those using the 9P protocol thanks to significant 9P VirtIO optimization.
  • Security:
    • The Kernel Memory Sanitizer was merged as a dynamic memory bug detector around uninitialized values ​​within the kernel code. This KMSAN depends on the compiler instrumentation currently found with LLVM Clang.
    • Linux 6.1 will by default warn about W+X kernel mappings and in a future kernel release may prohibit such mappings from being created in the first place.
    • EFI's work around confidential computing.
    • Retpolines hardening to ensure an INT3 after every hardcore jump.
    • SELinux continues to deprecate disable support at runtime.
    • RNG and crypto code improvements.
    • Runtime warnings for cross-field memcpy() which would have caught all memcpy-based buffer overflows in the last few years for the kernel.
  • Others:
    • More code cleanups ahead of PREEMPT_RT.
    • Improvements to the handling of Stall Pressure Information (PSI), including the ability to enable/disable PSI data at the group level.
    • Generic EFI compressed boot support.
    • Removal of high-speed serial/TTY driver over IEEE-1394 Firewire.
    • Finished removing the old a.out code.
    • Removed the old DECnet network code.
    • Merged MGLRU to revise Linux kernel page retrieval code and improve user experience, especially on Linux systems with limited RAM capacities.
    • Linux 6.1 will print the CPU core where a segmentation fault occurs. If Linux system administrators find that segmentation faults keep occurring on the same CPUs/cores, it may be a sign of a faulty processor.
    • The initial Rust framework has been merged into the initial support for the Rust programming language. New Rust drivers and other kernel subsystem abstractions will be merged in future kernel cycles.

Linux 6.1 It is now available en kernel.org. Most distributions will wait for the first maintenance update for adoption. This is expected to be the 2022 LTS release.


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