The New Features Of The Linux 3.17 Kernel

Now that the merge window has passed and Linux 3.17-rc1 released, here's a rundown of the new features for the Linux 3.17 kernel.

Highlights of Linux 3.17 include:

Graphics:

- Many Radeon GPU improvements -- including working Radeon R9 290 series support.

- Numerous graphics improvements for Intel's driver.

- Continued Nouveau driver improvements for this open-source NVIDIA driver.

- A new DRM driver.

Hardware:

- DMA-BUF cross-device synchronization support.

- Many old/unmaintained drivers were removed.

- Intel Braswell audio driver.

- Improved Sony SIXAXIS device support.

- Better Wacom tablet support.

- ACPI 5.1 / ACPI on ARM work.

- Lots of new ARM hardware enablement.

- Support for detecting free-falls of Toshiba laptops.

- Intel Idle Broadwell support.

Other:

- Support for using EFI to boot Xen Dom0.

- KVM improvements for x86.

- Enhancements to F2FS.

- A sysfs interface for XFS.

- Linux APIC code is working towards a big overhaul.

- Update: Linux 3.17 also lands Memfd, a prereq for KDBUS.

Stay tuned for our benchmarking of the Linux 3.17 kernel and other kernel tests that will be coming on Phoronix in the days and weeks ahead.