The New & Improved Features Of The Linux 4.19 Kernel

[steven36]

Torvalds has published the first Release Candidate for Linux 4.19, two weeks after the Linux 4.18 kernel series was launched.

 

 

Linux 4.19 has been an interesting cycle and was fairly eventful but some problematic pull requests led Linus Torvalds to calling it a horrible merge window From our original reporting over the past two weeks, highlights of the Linux 4.19 kernel include:

 

 

Display / Graphics:

- The VKMS DRM driver was merged for virtual kernel mode-setting and may be of use moving forward to some headless systems.

- The USB Type-C display mode alternate driver was merged to the mainline kernel for stepping up the DP Type-C support, but more work on integrating with the DRM drivers is still being tackled.

- Initial support for the Qualcomm Adreno 600 series hardware.

- Continued work on bringing up the Intel Icelake "Gen 11" graphics.

- Raven Ridge "stutter mode" support, JPEG VCN engine support, GFXOFF, and AMDKFD compute driver support for these latest AMD Zen+GFX9 APUs.

- Armada atomic mode-setting.

- Deferred console takeover support for FBDEV.

- Various other DRM improvements.

 

 

 

Processors:

- AMD Threadripper 2 temperature monitoring is now correct and this should also be back-ported to stable kernel series.

- The lazy TLB mode is lazier for some small possible performance enhancements.

- A kernel build-time option to indicate if you trust the CPU's hardware random number generator but by default will assume your CPU HWRNG is not trustworthy.

- Various crypto updates.

- The RISC-V code is beginning to work with user-space bits though this open-source processor ISA still has a long road ahead.

- Some minor work on OpenRISC.

- Many x86 KVM improvements.

- More Spectre mitigation work for IBM POWER processors as well as continued x86 Spectre updates and even some for IBM s390 too.

- "A bunch of good stuff" for 64-bit ARM.

- Improved NUMA emulation.

- Intel Icelake LPSS support.

 

 

 

 

Storage / File-Systems:

- The EROFS file-system is added to the staging tree. This is a read-only file-system developed by Huawei for possible use in future Android mobile devices. EROFS is still missing an open-source user-space.

- Faster SMB3/CIFS performance.

- Low-level Btrfs improvements.

- Other routine file-system changes.

- F2FS discard is finally enabled by default.

- OverlayFS support for stack file operations and metadata-only copy-up.

 

 

Other Hardware:

- Initial support for 802.11ax wireless as well as initial Intel 802.11ax support in IWLWIFI.

- Creative Recon3D sound cards are finally supported along with other new sound hardware support.

- Support for the Nintendo Wii guitar and drum attachments to the Wiimote.

- ThinkPad calculator key support and more tablet touchscreens being supported.

- A Raspberry Pi voltage driver in mainline for supporting under-voltage situations and more.

Other Big Additions

- An in-kernel GPS subsystem was added to the kernel... Yes, only in 2018 is there a formal GPS/GNSS subsystem in the mainline kernel.

- ChromeOS EC CEC driver addition for HDMI CEC support with some Chromebooks. USB charging support was also added to the ChromeOS EC driver.

- Google's Gasket Driver Framework was merged - the Google ASIC Software, Kernel Extensions, and Tools. GASKET allows developing thin kernel drivers while shifting the rest of the driver logic to user-space code. GASKET is initially being used for the Google Apex chip.

- An idle injection framework and the never-ending work on Linux power management.

- The STACKLEAK GCC plug-in was merged for preventing some possible stack attacks on the kernel. This is based upon earlier work by PaX/GrSecurity.

- Continued Y2038 preparations and other work.

- Linux 4.19 now requires GCC 4.6 or newer for building with support from GCC 4.5 through GCC 3.2 finally being dropped.

Onwards now to begin benchmarking the Linux 4.19 kernel.

 

Source: [Phoronix]