Linux 6.6 Features Include The EEVDF Scheduler, Shadow Stack, Intel IVSC, AMD DBC & More
Storage / File-Systems:
- ReiserFS was declared obsolete and will likely be removed in 2025.
- KSMBD is no longer experimental for that in-kernel SMB server.
- CephFS added FSCRYPT support following a years-long effort.
- The SMB client now allows adjusting the cache time for directory contents.
- FUSE adds initial support for statx with file birth/creation times.
- A nice performance optimization for EXT4.
- DEFLATE compression for EROFS.
- NFSD enables NFSv4.2 READ_PLUS by default.
- XFS begins landing online repair support.
- There's a new XFS release manager.
- "Pretty juicy" IOmap improvements.
- Btrfs fixes.
- It's now easier disabling IO_uring system-wide.
- IO_uring support for vectored FUTEX waits.
Other Hardware:
- Many new networking features and new wired/wireless hardware support.
- USB MIDI 2.0 gadget function driver was merged while the USB subsystem updates also included earlier Lunar Lake USB work.
- Cirrus Logic CS42L43 audio codec support.
- New ASUS laptop features with its x86 platform driver.
- An HP BIOS settings driver "hpbioscfg" that allows managing some system BIOS settings from within Linux, similar to existing Lenovo and Dell drivers.
- AMD patches for generating DeviceTree nodes for PCI devices.
- The Intle IVSC driver is added for the Intel Visual Sensing Controller with modern laptops.
- Voltage and temperature sensor support for more desktop motherboards.
- Intel Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake sound support.
- Better handling for unresponsive Intel QAT devices.
Linux Security:
- Randomized Kmalloc caches for further system hardening.
- SELinux now removes references to the US National Security Agency (NSA) that started Security Enhanced Linux.
- The kernel now unconditionally enables x86 CPU microcode loading support.
- RISC-V now supports KASLR for kernel address space layout randomization to provide better security along with other RISC-V improvements.
Other Linux Changes:
- Another upgrade to the Rust toolchain.
- Multi-grained timestamps are introduced.
- The new fchmodat2 system call.
- The GenPD subsystem was introduced.
- Microsoft Hyper-V support for AMD SEV-SNP and Intel TDX guests.
- The make xconfig interface ported to Qt6 while also retaining Qt 5.15 LTS toolkit compatibility.
- Printk clean-ups in working toward the threaded / atomic console printing support that is needed for finally unblocking the real-time (PREEMPT_RT) support in mainline.
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