Now that the Linux 6.10 merge window has wrapped up, here's a look at all of the exciting features/changes coming to this summer 2024 kernel. Linux 6.10 brings a lot as usual for the latest/upcoming Intel and AMD platforms, never-ending work on file-systems, a new memory sealing "mseal" system call, TPM bus encryption, and dozens of other exciting changes and new hardware support.
Among the quick highlights for Linux 6.10 are faster AES-XTS disk/file encryption when running modern Intel/AMD CPUs, TPM bus encryption and integrity, memory sealing system call (mseal), NFSv2 client support disabled by default, support for newer AMD graphics cards on RISC-V platforms, the NTSYNC driver was merged but not yet in usable form for Linux gamers (Wine / Steam Play), RISC-V now supports the Rust programming language within the kernel, more upstreaming around the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC, Steam Deck IMU support, and the XFS file-system expanding its online repair capabilities. Linux 6.10 even honors a prison letter "change request" by Hans Reiser prior to the ReiserFS file-system being removed from the kernel.
Continue on for the more thorough list of the Linux 6.10 features/changes.
Graphics / Display:
- The Panthor DRM driver is merged for supporting newer Arm Mali GPUs that require the firmware-based Command Stream Frontend (CSF).
- More Intel Lunar Lake graphics/display enablement.
- HDMI sound support for Intel Battlemage graphics cards .
- An Intel low-latency hint for improving compute workload performance.
- Many other open-source GPU driver improvements .
- Improved AMD ROCm/AMDKFD support for "small" Ryzne APUs .
- Configurable boot image compression for RISC-V so that BZ2 / LZ4 / LZMA / LZO / Zstd can be selected if desired rather than just sticking to Gzip.
- Support for newer AMD GPUs on RISC-V hardware. RISC-V now has kernel-mode FPU support that is needed for AMDGPU's Display Core to work with newer AMD graphics cards having DCN IP.
- DisplayPort/eDP for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite .
Processors:
- NUMA balancing for multi-size trnasparent huge pages (multi-size THPs / mTHPs) yielding some nice performance benefits.
- Intel and AMD P-State driver updates with fixes and other enhancements for CPU frequency scaling on modern Intel and AMD processors.
- 64-bit ARM can now optionally disable 32-bit user-space support .
- ARM64 support for building Flat Image Tree (FIT) images . FITs are the Linux kernel with the needed DeviceTree that are then easily distributed and can be booted by the likes of U-Boot, Coreboot, and LinuxBoot.
- RISC-V now supports Rust code within its Linux kernel build .
- Support for the RISC-V Milk-V Mars and various ARM platform additions .
- Live migration for the Intel QAT driver .
- Intel HFI will quit wasting CPU cycles .
- Perf tool updates for AMD Zen 5 CPUs along with updating the events for newer Intel CPU models.
- More KVM preparations around Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX).
- New hardware support within the Turbostat utility .
- The x86 instruction decoder is now ready for APX and other new Intel x86_64 ISA additions .
- x32 shadow stacks and other x86 changes .
- Dropping support for very old DEC Alpha hardware .
- PowerPC 40x processor support is removed from the mainline kernel.