After the merge window ended we published our usual Linux 5.13 feature overview . But for those that don't recall all those changes during the merge window from the end of April to early May, here is a recap of what's in store for this next kernel version with the most prominent changes worth mentioning.
- Initial support for the Apple M1 SoC and 2020 hardware platforms albeit this support is still early work-in-progress with no mainline support yet for the Apple M1 GPU, etc.
- The Landlock Linux security module has been merged after years in development for allowing unprivileged application sandboxing.
- Initial graphics support for Alder Lake S along with a lot of other Intel Alder Labe enablement that made it into Linux 5.13 like for Perf and other areas.
- AMDGPU FreeSync HDMI support is now mainline for allowing FreeSync on HDMI (pre v2.1) connections rather than just via DisplayPort.
- Initial support for Aldebaran as the next-gen AMD CDNA accelerator.
- a new Intel cooling driver to allow downclocking the CPU at a lower temperature threshold than the system default.
- A generic USB display driver for use-cases like turning a Raspberry Pi Zero into a USB-based display adapter.
- More performance enhancements to IO_uring and its growing adoption throughout the open-source ecosystem.
- Realtek RTL8156 and RTL8153D network adapter support. Meanwhile on the audio side is also some new Realtek hardware support .
- Amazon's Luna Game Controller now supported by the XPad driver .
- Touchpad and keyboard support for newer Microsoft Surface laptops that previously required using out-of-tree kernel code.
- Clang Control Flow Integrity support (CFI) for the mainline kernel for enhancing security with only minor run-time overhead.
- Randomizing the kernel stack offsets per system call as another kernel security improvements.