The New Features Of The Linux 5.7 Kernel: Tiger Lake Graphics Stable, New exFAT, Zstd F2FS, Performance
Linus Torvalds is expected to deliver an Easter day kernel release in the form of Linux 5.7-rc1. After a two week merge window, Linux 5.7 feature development formally ends today. Here is a look at the many exciting improvements and new features to find with Linux 5.7.
Below is our list of the new Linux 5.7 kernel features based on our original monitoring of the mailing lists and Git repositories. There is a lot of exciting stuff from new/improved Intel and AMD hardware support to the new exFAT driver to other file-system improvements and a number of performance improvements across the different subsystems / areas of the kernel.
Following today's Linux 5.7-rc1 kernel release, weekly release candidates will continue as usual. If all goes well, Linux 5.7 should debut as stable around early June.
Processors:
- The Intel P-State driver now uses a Schedutil governor default when in the passive (non-HWP) mode thanks to the frequency invariance support for schedutil.
- Preparations for supporting the RISC-V Kendryte K210 SoC.
- Support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865.
- Many new ARM devices supported including the Pine Tab, PineBook Pro, and others.
- Intel SpeedSelect Technology updates.
- In-kernel pointer authentication on ARM64.
- Secure / protected guest VM support on IBM s390 and POWER architectures.
- Better Loongson 3 CPU/platform support.
- A speculative execution fix for C-SKY CPUs.
- Thermal pressure tracking for systems that are thermally overloaded for better task placement on CPU cores running hot.
Open-Source Graphics:
- Intel Tiger Lake graphics are now enabled by default with the "Gen 12" graphics now considered stable enough for providing out-of-the-box.
- DRM TTM hugepage support for initially improving the VMWGFX experience but eventually other drivers too.
- A few nasty bugs with Nouveau cleared up.
- Better Meson video decode support.
- Intel iGPU Leak security mitigation for old Gen7/Gen7.5 hardware.
- HDR/OLED panel support in AMDGPU.
- Fixes for new Renoir hardware.
- The VMware VMWGFX graphics driver stack has been preparing OpenGL 4.x support.
File-Systems / Storage:
- IO_uring improvements for this very promising Linux I/O interface.
- The new exFAT file-system driver that replaces the exFAT driver in the staging area that had been around for a few releases. This new exFAT driver is in much better shape and actively maintained by Samsung.
- Zstd compression for the F2FS file-system.
- XFS is preparing for online repair support and other underlying improvements.
- Performance improvements for Ceph.