Some Of The Features You Can Expect With Linux 6.7

With Linux 6.6 expected to be released tomorrow as stable, the Linux 6.7 merge window in turn will be opened. Here's a preview of some of the changes expected for this next kernel cycle.

Based on my monitoring of the various "-next" branches, here is a look ahead at a lot of what is on the table for Linux 6.7: barring any last minute changes or objections being raised by Linus Torvalds to any of the pull requests. Plus there is a lot more that I haven't yet written about so stay tuned for a very active two week merge window... Already in advance of Linux 6.6 being released a number of Linux 6.7 pull requests have been submitted early.

- One of the most significant hardware changes is Intel Meteor Lake graphics now considered stable. Meteor Lake CPUs will begin shipping in December so Intel is now enabling the support out-of-the-box rather than hidden behind the "i915.force_probe" option.

- Itanium IA-64 support is expected to be removed.

- It will be easier to boot-time disable support for x86 32-bit user-space programs.

- Intel's Habana Labs accelerator driver has finished adapting to the accel subsystem.

- Intel DG2-G12 stepping support.

- The incomplete Ponte Vecchio support is being removed from i915 with Intel focusing their PVC support code in the Xe kernel driver.

- Updated Intel IBRS mitigation handling to help slightly with performance.

- Intel La Jolla Cove Adapter (LJCA) adapter drivers.

- AMD has been busy enabling new GPU support and GFX11.5 / RDNA3 refresh hardware.

- The AMD Versal EDAC driver is being upstreamed.

- AMD is enabling Seamless Boot functionality on more hardware.

- The Intel HDMI sound driver is preparing for compatibility with the upcoming Xe DRM kernel graphics driver.

- The QLogic QLGE 10Gb Ethernet driver is to be removed from the kernel due to no longer being maintained.

- Rust bindings for workqueues.

- AMD systems will now indicate with /proc/cpuinfo if SVM virtualization is disabled in the BIOS.

- VirtIO VSOCK MSG_ZEROCOPY support for better performance.

- The Btrfs file-system is adding new functionality driven by Valve's Steam Deck.

- More efficient use of Intel QAT Gen4 hardware.

- Bcachefs might finally be upstreamed.

Stay tuned for more Linux 6.7 kernel coverage followed by the benchmarks.