The New Features Of Linux 4.15: AMDGPU DC, RISC-V, EPYC Benefits, VR Improvements

Other Stuff

- AMD Stoney Ridge audio support.

- AMD Raven Ridge audio support.

- Better HDMI CEC support - the nifty tech allowing for multiple HDMI devices to be controlled over a single cable and remote.

- New touchpad and touchscreen support.

- The USB Type-C Port Manager was promoted out of staging.

- Support for networking over Thunderbolt cables using the Apple ThunderboltIP protocol.

- Continued work on Year 2038 fixes for the Y2038 problem / "Unix Millennium Bug".

- Mostly small KVM and Xen virtualization updates.

So at the end of the day Linux 4.15 brings significant improvements for AMD CPU and Radeon owners, a lot of enablement around future Intel processors, continued file-system / storage improvements, Thunderbolt networking support, and several different improvements for virtual reality / SteamVR on Linux.

Look for the Linux 4.15-rc1 release to happen soon in marking the official end of the merge window. Depending upon how many release candidates are needed to stabilize all of this new code, expect the official Linux 4.15 release to happen by mid-to-late January. Linux 4.15 is tentatively the kernel planned to be found in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS among other early 2018 Linux distribution updates.

Stay tuned for more Linux 4.15 kernel benchmarking soon. If you appreciate all our original and timely reporting along with our benchmarks and Linux hardware reviews, consider showing your support via Phoronix Premium and this week's holiday drive.