Linux 6.8 Is Very Exciting With Intel Xe Driver, Raspberry Pi 5 Graphics & New Hardware

Linux 6.8 could debut as stable as soon as tomorrow if all goes well... Linus Torvalds last week was unsure whether an extra release candidate would be needed after the quiet 6.8-rc7 release. This week's seen a continued flow of fixes land, so we'll see what Linus decides on Sunday but in any event there are already a number of early 6.9 pull requests.

As a reminder about all of the great new features and hardware support in Linux 6.8, here's a recap. Linux 6.8 has more additions for upcoming AMD Zen 5 hardware, more Intel Lunar Lake enablement, early work on AMD color management code is upstreamed but not built by default, the Intel Xe DRM driver is upstreamed for experimental support with current Intel graphics, the Imagination PowerVR Rogue DRM driver was upstreamed, initial Raspberry Pi 5 graphics driver support, support for several cheap ARM-based handheld game consoles, Nintendo Switch Online controller support, continued Linux kernel scheduler tuning, and a network TCP performance boost for many concurrent connections.

That's the quick summary for the most exciting elements of Linux 6.8 from my perspective. If wanting a more thorough overview of the Linux 6.8 kernel changes, see our Linux 6.8 feature overview.

Linux 6.8 is being used by the upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Fedora 40, and other spring Linux distribution releases. Here's to hoping it's in good shape for releasing tomorrow, 10 March, followed by kicking off the Linux 6.9 cycle.