It's Linux 5.0 Kernel Day Followed By The Start Of Linux 5.1

Before the day is through Linus Torvalds is expected to officially release the Linux 5.0 kernel and immediately following that he'll be kicking off the Linux 5.1 kernel cycle by the opening of the two-week-long merge window.

Linux 5.0 is another exciting update. Particularly for AMD Radeon graphics users, this release is super special as it finally delivers on the long-awaited FreeSync support! FreeSync now works off the mainline Linux kernel with the AMDGPU code and assuming your user-space bits are also up-to-date. FreeSync is the headlining end-user feature with Linux 5.0 but there is also initial RTX Turing support in Nouveau on the green side, continued work on bringing up next-gen Intel and AMD processors, Adiantum fscrypt support, Logitech high resolution scrolling, and much more.

If you are behind on your Phoronix reading, shame on you. But for a quick overview of what's new in Linux 5.0 see our quick overview of Linux 5.0 and/or the more thorough Linux 5.0 feature overview.

There is though a regression in the network code of Linux 5.0 that doesn't appear to be resolved yet but at least its impact is limited unlike some of the other recent kernel performance slowdowns. Linux 5.0 overall appears to be in great shape and have run it on dozens of test systems already in its Git state.

Turning our eyes towards Linux 5.1 there is the new Habana Labs Goya AI accelerator driver, a lot of new sound hardware supported, ACPI 6.3 support, Bitmain SoC support, Chrome OS Wilco driver is being added, Qualcomm FastRPC is finally going mainline, continued Intel Icelake work, some performance optimizations for big NUMA servers, Intel Fastboot is being flipped on for recent generations of their graphics, new Intel WiFi hardware support, a new TEO CPU idle governor, and much more as we'll be covering closely over the weeks ahead.