Linux 6.0 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.0 Release

Linux 6.0 has just been released by Linus Torvalds: So, as is hopefully clear to everybody, the major version number change is more about me running out of fingers and toes than it is about any big fundamental changes. But of course there’s a lot of various changes in 6.0 – we’ve got over 15k non-merge commits in there in total, after all, and as such 6.0 is one of the bigger releases at least in numbers of commits in a while. The shortlog of changes below is only the last week since 6.0-rc7. A little bit of everything, although the diffstat is dominated by drm (mostly amd new chip support) and networking drivers. And this obviously means that tomorrow I’ll open the merge window for 6.1. Which – unlike 6.0 – has a number of fairly core new things lined up. But for now, please do give this most […]

Linux 5.19 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 5.19 release arm risc-v mips

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.19. It should be the last 5.xx version, with Linux 6.0 coming for the next cycle: So here we are, one week late, and 5.19 is tagged and pushed out. The full shortlog (just from rc8, obviously not all of 5.19) is below, but I can happily report that there is nothing really interesting in there. A lot of random small stuff. In the diffstat, the loongarch updates stand out, as does another batch of the networking sysctl READ_ONCE() annotations to make some of the data race checker code happy. Other than that it’s really just a mixed bag of various odds and ends. On a personal note, the most interesting part here is that I did the release (and am writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It’s something I’ve been waiting for for a _loong_ time, and it’s finally reality, […]

Linux 5.18 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 5.18 release arm risc-v mips

Linux 5.18 is out! Linus Torvalds has just announced the release on lkml: No unexpected nasty surprises this last week, so here we go with the 5.18 release right on schedule. That obviously means that the merge window for 5.19 will open tomorrow, and I already have a few pull requests pending. Thank you everybody. I’d still like people to run boring old plain 5.18 just to check, before we start with the excitement of all the new features for the merge window. The full shortlog for the last week is below, and nothing really odd stands out. The diffstat looks a bit funny – unusually we have parsic architecture patches being a big part of it due to some last-minute cache flushing fixes, but that is probably more indicative of everything else being pretty small. So outside of the parisc fixes, there’s random driver updates (mellanox mlx5 stands out, […]

Linux 5.17 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 5.17 changelog

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 5.17: So we had an extra week of at the end of this release cycle, and I’m happy to report that it was very calm indeed. We could probably have skipped it with not a lot of downside, but we did get a few last-minute reverts and fixes in and avoid some brown-paper bugs that would otherwise have been stable fodder, so it’s all good. And that calm last week can very much be seen from the appended shortlog – there really aren’t a lot of commits in here, and it’s all pretty small. Most of it is in drivers (net, usb, drm), with some core networking, and some tooling updates too. It really is small enough that you can just scroll through the details below, and the one-liner summaries will give a good flavor of what happened last week. Of course, this means […]

Samsung Exynos 2200 SoC features Xclipse 920 GPU with AMD RDNA 2 architecture

Samsung Exynos 2200

Samsung has just unveiled the Exynos 2200 Armv9 SoC equipped with Samsung Xplipse 920 GPU based on AMD RDNA architecture and promising console quality graphics on mobile devices. Manufactured with a 4nm process, the octa-core processor also features Arm Cortex-X2, Cortex-A710, and Cortex-A510 cores, a 5G modem for up to 7.35 Gbps downlink, 8K video encoding and decoding, as well as support for LPDDR5 memory and UFS 3.1 storage. Exynos 2200 specifications: CPU 1x Arm Cortex-X2 3x Arm Cortex-A710 4x Arm Cortex-A510 GPU – Samsung Xclipse 920 GPU built with AMD RDNA 2 technology enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing (RT) and variable rate shading (VRS), a first on mobile according to Samsung VPU Video decode – 8Kp60 10-bit HEVC (H.265), 8Kp30 10-bit VP9, AV1 Video encode – 8Kp30 10-bit HEVC(H.265), VP9 AI – AI Engine with Dual-core NPU and DSP up to 52 TOPS (TBC) Memory – LPDDR5 Storage – UFS […]

Linux 5.16 Release – Main Changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 5.16 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.16: Not a lot here since -rc8, which is not unexpected. We had that extra week due to the holidays, and it’s not like we had lots of last-minute things that needed to be sorted out. So this mainly contains some driver fixes (mainly networking and rdma), a cgroup credential use fix, a few core networking fixes, a couple of last-minute reverts, and some other random noise. The appended shortlog is so small that you might as well scroll through it. This obviously means that the merge window for 5.17 opens tomorrow, and I’m happy to say I already have several pending early pull requests. I wish I had even more, because this merge window is going to be somewhat painful due to unfortunate travel for family reasons. So I’ll be doing most of it on the road on a laptop […]

Linux 5.15 LTS release – Main Changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 5.15

Linus Torvalds released Linux 5.15, an LTS version, this past Sunday: It’s been calm, and I have no excuse to add an extra rc, so here we are, with v5.15 pushed out, and the merge window starting tomorrow. Which is going to be a bit inconvenient for me, since I also have some conference travel coming up. But it’s only a couple of days and I’ll have my laptop with me. Sometimes the release timing works out, and sometimes it doesn’t.. Anyway, the last week of 5.15 was mainly networking and gpu fixes, with some random sprinkling of other things (a few btrfs reverts, some kvm updates, minor other fixes here and there – a few architecture fixes, couple of tracing, small driver fixes etc). Full shortlog appended. This release may have started out with some -Werror pain, but it calmed down fairly quickly and on the whole 5.15 was […]

Linux 5.14 Release – Main changes, Arm, MIPS, and RISC-V architectures

Linux 5.14 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced Linux 5.14 release which happens to almost coincide with the anniversary of the initial announcement of the “small” project on August 25, 1991, about 30 years ago. Here’s Linux 5.14’s announcement: So I realize you must all still be busy with all the galas and fancy balls and all the other 30th anniversary events, but at some point you must be getting tired of the constant glitz, the fireworks, and the champagne. That ball gown or tailcoat isn’t the most comfortable thing, either. The celebrations will go on for a few more weeks yet, but you all may just need a breather from them. And when that happens, I have just the thing for you – a new kernel release to test and enjoy. Because 5.14 is out there, just waiting for you to kick the tires and remind yourself what all the festivities are […]