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Linux 4.20 Released in Time for Christmas (betanews.com)
Linus Torvalds has announced the general availability of v4.20 of the Linux kernel. In a post to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Torvalds said that there was no point in delaying the release of the latest stable version of the kernel just because so many people are taking a break for the holiday season. From a report: He says that while there are no known issues with the release, the shortlog is a little longer than he would have liked. However "nothing screams 'oh, that's scary'", he insists. The most notable features and changes in the new version includes: New hardware support! New hardware support includes bringing up the graphics for AMD Picasso and Raven 2 APUs, continued work on bringing up Vega 20, Intel has continued putting together its Icelake Gen 11 graphics support, there is support for the Hygon Dhyana CPUs out of China based upon AMD Zen, C-SKY 32-bit CPU support, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC enablement, Intel 2.5G Ethernet controller support for "Foxville", Creative Sound Blaster ZxR and AE-5 sound card support, and a lot of smaller additions.
Besides new hardware support when it comes to graphics processors, in the DRM driver space there is also VCN JPEG acceleration for Raven Ridge, GPUVM performance work resulting in some nice Vulkan gaming boosts, Intel DRM now has full PPGTT support for Haswell/IvyBridge/ValleyView, and HDMI 2.0 support for the NVIDIA/Nouveau driver. On the CPU front there are some early signs of AMD Zen 2 bring-up, nested virtualization now enabled by default for AMD/Intel CPUs, faster context switching for IBM POWER9, and various x86_64 optimizations. Fortunately the STIBP work for cross-hyperthread Spectre V2 mitigation was smoothed out over the release candidates that the performance there is all good now.
Btrfs performance improvements, new F2FS features, faster FUSE performance, and MDRAID improvements for RAID10 round out the file-system/storage work. One of the technical highlights of Linux 4.20 that will be built up moving forward is the PCIe peer-to-peer memory support for device-to-device memory copies over PCIe for use-cases like data going directly from NICs to SSD storage or between multiple GPUs.
Besides new hardware support when it comes to graphics processors, in the DRM driver space there is also VCN JPEG acceleration for Raven Ridge, GPUVM performance work resulting in some nice Vulkan gaming boosts, Intel DRM now has full PPGTT support for Haswell/IvyBridge/ValleyView, and HDMI 2.0 support for the NVIDIA/Nouveau driver. On the CPU front there are some early signs of AMD Zen 2 bring-up, nested virtualization now enabled by default for AMD/Intel CPUs, faster context switching for IBM POWER9, and various x86_64 optimizations. Fortunately the STIBP work for cross-hyperthread Spectre V2 mitigation was smoothed out over the release candidates that the performance there is all good now.
Btrfs performance improvements, new F2FS features, faster FUSE performance, and MDRAID improvements for RAID10 round out the file-system/storage work. One of the technical highlights of Linux 4.20 that will be built up moving forward is the PCIe peer-to-peer memory support for device-to-device memory copies over PCIe for use-cases like data going directly from NICs to SSD storage or between multiple GPUs.
I noticed that they try to avoid telling you which modules are being updated. It seems they know users are allergic to certain modules written by chinese hackers and they want to hide those.
...I will say it so that no one else has to.
Blaze it.
Linux (the kernel) adopting systemd? What in the name of the fuck are you talking about?
I'm hoping for a blazing fast adoption
Fair point. It's much more likely to be other way round.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
How about a Code of conduct review release?
All comments and the ethics of the code use will get a full review.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
DRM is Direct Rendering Manager in the narrow context of the Linix kernel specifically. It does not stand for Digital Rights Management, which is how many might try to interpret it. Any editor that would allow DRM to be used for Direct Rendering Manager in a computer technology context without spelling it out first should have their guild card revoked.
420 for Christmas?
'Nuff said....
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I'd rather the kernel be released and announced because it met the quality standards, and not because it was in time for Christmas.
Perfect Christmas night :)
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Nobody said it was released to make it in time for Christmas.
So, bah humbug to your plebeian logical fallacy.
How should we celebrate this release?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
it's about time we get an alternative to the U.S. monopoly on Intel-compatible CPUs in the consumer market. But I fear that the U.S. will do everything they can to defeat it. They want the whole world to buy from them and nobody else, and they'll lie and cheat as much as they can to make it happen.
WTF is a shortlog?
i see what you did
That's so dope.
Creative Sound Blaster ZxR and AE-5 sound card support
Does this even matter any more with pulseaudio? PA killed the usefulness of multi-open cards. PA certainly isn't low latency. What good is a better sound card when the near-mandated sound solution enforces software mixing? It would be like getting a 3D video accelerator on a system that enforces software rendering.
PA is not 'near-mandated', if you want low latency you install something like Ubuntu Studio which uses Jack and the low-latency kernel, no PA.