Linux 6.9 Features: DM VDO, AMD Preferred Core, Intel FRED & Larger Console Fonts
Storage / File-Systems:
- Dropping the old NTFS driver.
- Improved case-insensitive file/folder handling.
- Performance optimizations for Btrfs.
- The DM VDO was upstreamed for this Virtual Data Optimizer that's long been out-of-tree.
- More efficient discard and improved journal pipelining for Bcachefs.
- FUSE passthrough mode finally made it to the mainline kernel.
- More online repair improvements for XFS.
- Improved support for old Macs with Firewire for virtualization use.
- Improved zoned block device support for F2FS.
- Durable file handles for KMSBD, the in-kernel SMB server.
- Much faster exFAT performance when engaging the "dirsync" mount option.
- IO_uring now supports truncate and per-ring NAPI.
General Hardware:
- Many networking improvements.
- Improvements for AMD and Intel laptops like better HP laptop performance for select models due to a higher TDP.
- Native memory performance enumeration and error injection for CXL.
- Support for Snakebyte Gamepads.
- New hardware monitoring drivers for NZXT and ASUS AIO CPU liquid cooling products.
- Supporting more Samsung Bluetooth HID devices.
- Removing more code for the defunct Intel Carillo Ranch platform.
- Soundwire updates for Intel and AMD.
Linux Security:
- Microsoft now better seeds the RNG for Hyper-V VMs.
- A build-time control for whether to authorize attached USB devices.
- A change to satisfy Microsoft for EFI x86 shim loader signing.
- Easier management of security mitigation options.
Other Linux Changes:
- A fix for too many debug messages slowing down some AMD systems.
- Significant changes to workqueues.
- Continued cleaning of the printk code in prearation for atomic consoles.
- Improvements to the Linux speak-up driver.
- Continued enhancements to the SLUB allocator.
- Lowering the overhead of CR3 writes.
- A big rework to the CPU timers code.
- Upgrading to the Rust 1.76 toolchain.
Now off to fire up some new Linux kernel benchmarks...
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