Linux 4.3 Kernel To Add The MOST Driver Subsystem

While the Linux 4.2 kernel hasn't been officially released yet, Greg Kroah-Hartman sent in early his pull requests for the various subsystems he maintains for the Linux 4.3 merge window.

The pull requests sent in by Greg KH on Thursday include the Linux 4.3 merge window updates for the driver core, TTY/serial, USB driver, char/misc, and the staging area. These pull requests don't offer any really shocking changes but mostly routine work on improvements / additions / bug-fixes. The staging area once again is heavy with various fixes and clean-ups but there's also a new driver subsystem.

Greg mentioned of the 4.3 staging changes, "Lots of things all over the place, almost all of them trivial fixups and changes. The usual IIO updates and new drivers and we have added the MOST driver subsystem which is getting cleaned up in the tree. The ozwpan driver is finally being deleted as it is obviously abandoned and no one cares about it."

The MOST driver subsystem is short for the Media Oriented Systems Transport. The documentation to be added in the Linux 4.3 kernel explains, "The Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) driver gives Linux applications access a MOST network: The Automotive Information Backbone and the de-facto standard for high-bandwidth automotive multimedia networking. MOST defines the protocol, hardware and software layers necessary to allow for the efficient and low-cost transport of control, real-time and packet data using a single medium (physical layer). Media currently in use are fiber optics, unshielded twisted pair cables (UTP) and coax cables. MOST also supports various speed grades up to 150 Mbps." As explained, MOST is mostly about Linux in automotive applications.

While Greg KH sent in his various subsystem updates for Linux 4.3, he didn't yet propose the KDBUS kernel code be pulled. He's previously expressed plans for KDBUS in Linux 4.3 so we'll wait until the 4.3 merge window officially gets going to see what happens. Stay tuned to Phoronix for more Linux 4.3 kernel coverage next week when the merge window will begin, assuming Linus releases 4.2 this weekend.