Linux 3.2 Release

Linux Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.2 on the 4th of January:

So 3.2 is out, and the merge window for 3.3 is thus officially open.

I delayed 3.2 first a few days to wait for the final linux-next (“final” in the sense that that’s what I’ll fetch to decide whether something has been in linux-next for 3.3 or not), and then some more as people were coming back from holidays and sorting out some regressions. So we do have a few last-minute reverts and small fixes.

Still, there’s not a whole lot of changes since -rc7 (shortlog appended), and almost all of them are *tiny*. So despite the few annoying last-minute reverts, I’m feeling pretty happy about it.

Linus

Linux 3.1 added support for OpenRISC,  Near-Field Communication (NFC) and new power tuning tools called cpupowerutils, as well as support for Xilinx boards and i.MX53 ARD.

Linux 3.2 brings the following key changes:

• File systems improvements with larger block size (up to 1MB vs. 4kb previously) support for ext-4 and better performance for BTRFS.
• Support for Qualcomm Hexagon processor, a general-purpose digital signal processor designed for high performance and low power.
• Experimental support for thin provisioning can now be enabled in order to better manage disk space quotas for multiple users.
• Improved live profiling tool “perf top” The tool has been rewritten to provide a prettier output and the ability to navigate while data capture is going on, as well as the new ability to zoom into tasks and libraries.
• Process bandwith controller. CPU bandwidth control allows to set an explicit maximum limit for allowable CPU bandwidth in order to avoid instances where unbounded allocation of CPU bandwidth may lead to unacceptable utilization or latency variations (Google has this kind of issue).
• TCP Proportional Rate Reduction. This is the implementation of Google’s Proportional Rate Reduction algorithm which improves latency and the time to recover packet losses.

Further details on Linux 3.2 are available on Kernelnewbies.org.

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