Linux Kernel 3.4 Has Been Officially Released

After another seven Release Candidates, Linus Torvalds proudly announced a few hours ago, May 20th, the immediate availability for download of Linux kernel 3.4.

Among the new features incorporated in Linux kernel 3.4 we can mention lots of improvements to the Btrfs filesystem, as well as support for Nvidia GeForce 600 'Kepler', RadeonHD 7xxx and Trinity APU series.

"Nothing really exciting happened since -rc7, although the workaround for a linker bug on x86 is larger than I'd have liked at this stage, and sticks out like a sore thumb in the diffstat. That said, it's not like even that patch was really all that scary."

"In fact, I think the 3.4 release cycle as a whole has been fairly calm. Sure, I always wish for the -rc's to calm down more quickly than they ever seem to do, but I think on the whole we didn't have any big disruptive events, which is just how I like it. Let's hope the 3.5 merge window is a calm one too." - said Linus Torvalds in the official announcement.

Highlights of Linux Kernel 3.4:

· Data recovery and repair tools for Btrfs;
· Metadata blocks bigger than 4KB in Btrfs;
· Btrfs performance improvements;
· Better error handling in Btrfs;
· Initial support of Nvidia GeForce 600 'Kepler';
· Support of Intel Medfield graphics;
· Support for Trinity APU and RadeonHD 7xxx series;
· New X32 ABI: 64 bit mode with 32 bit pointers;
· x86 CPU driver autoprobing;
· Verifiable boot path with the device mapper "verity" target;
· Support for an external read-only device as the origin source of a thin provisioned LVM volume;
· perf improvements: better assembly visualization, GTK2 report GUI, branch profiling, filtering of users and threads;
· 'Yama' security module.

Linux kernel 3.4 also comes with many improvements in various areas, such as memory management fixes, networking, improvements for EXT4, FUSE, NFS, XFS, HFSplus, CIFS and GFS2 filesystems, as well as KVM and Xen virtualization improvements.

For a complete list of all the newly added drivers, newly supported devices, and other improvements, do not hesitate to view the official changelog and the Linux kernel 3.4 DriverArch page.

Download Linux kernel 3.4 right now from Softpedia.

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