In my testing of the Linux 7.1 kernel over the past number of weeks and prior to that all of the monitoring of the merge window and "-next" branches before that, here is what has me the most excited about Linux 7.1:
- The new NTFS file-system driver for those looking forward to a nicer experience when reading and writing to this widely-used Microsoft file-system.
- Intel FRED is now enabled by default for Flexible Return and Event Delivery. FRED allows better performance on Intel Panther Lake as a nice win as I've shown in benchmarks.
- ALso on the Intel performance side, some nice performance improvements for Intel Arc Battlemage graphics . This is both for the consumer graphics cards like the Intel Arc B580 as well as also seeing better performance on the Arc Pro B-Series .
- Some other performance-related work includes more scheduler improvements and enabling more crypto optimizations by default . There is also a fix for a Sheaves performance regression .
- AMDGPU DC support for GCN 1.1 APUs . Those still using AMD Kaveri APUs and similar will now see a better experience when using the latest Linux 7.1 kernel with the AMDGPU graphics driver.
- Mainline ARM kernels now support real-time "RT" kernel builds without any ouf-ot-tree patches for those 32-bit ARM environments.
- Support for the Realtek RTL8157 and other new networking hardware .
- The Lenovo Yoga Fan driver for fan control support across various Lenovo Legion, Flex, Slim, and IdeaPad laptops.
See our Linux 7.1 feature overview for a more comprehensive look at all of the interesting features coming to this next kernel version. If all goes well, Linux 7.1 stable will be out on Sunday, 14 June.