Linux Kernel 2.6.25 Released

Linus Torvalds announced last evening the immediate availability of the 2.6.25 Linux kernel. This new release contains new technologies, some updated drivers and miscellaneous fixes:

"It's been long promised, but there it is now. Special thanks to Ingo who found and fixed a nasty-looking regression that

turned out to not be a regression at all, but an old bug that just had not been triggering as reliably before. [..] So it's mostly one-liners, with some updates to drivers (net and usb) and to networking that are a bit larger (although a number of the driver updates are things like just new IDs etc)." said Linus Torvalds.

Let's have a look now at the most important technologies introduced in this release:

• Memory Resource Controller
• Real Time Group scheduling
• RCU Preemption support
• FIFO ticket spinlocks in x86
• Better process memory usage measurement
• timerfd() syscall
• SMACK, Simplified Mandatory Access Control
• Latencytop
• BRK and PIE executable randomization
• Controller area network (CAN) protocol support
• ACPI thermal regulation/WMI
• EXT4 update
• MN10300/AM33 architecture support

Among the new drivers introduced in this release we can mention:

Graphic drivers

• i915:

-Add suspend/resume support.
-Add support for E7221 chipset
-Add chipset ID for Intel Integrated Graphics Device.

• Add initial ATI r500 DRM support
• Suspend support for SiS AGP
• Add initial rs690 support to drm
• Add support for Sis 662/671
• fbdev: add BF52x EZkit Display driver
• Add S3c2412 support to S3c2410 fb driver

SCSI drivers

• Bidirectional command support
• lpfc: Added support for ASICs that report temperature
• megaraid_sas: add hibernation support
• AHS Support
• qla2xxx: Add Fibre Channel Event (FCE) tracing support
• aacraid: Add Voodoo Lite class of cards, add optional MSI support
• psi240i: Remove driver
• seagate: Remove driver
• mvsas: Add Marvell 6440 SAS/SATA driver, convert from rough draft to working driver
• qla4xxx: add async scan support
• ses: add new Enclosure ULD
• enclosure: add support for enclosure services
• mca_53c9x: remove driver
• remove m68k NCR53C9x based drivers
• dec_esp: Remove driver
• NCR53C9x: remove driver

Sound drivers

• Scheduled OSS driver removal
• HDA: Add Asus VX1 support, add support for RV610/RV630 HDMI audio; STAC92HD71 codec mixer; add support of HP Thin Client T5735; add support for RV6xx HDMI audio; initial support of the Mitac 8252D (based on ALC883); add ALC889/ALC267/ALC269 support; add support for VIA VT1708B HD audio codec; added more 92HD71 codecs; added STAC92HD73 support; add IEC958 digital out support for Lenovo Thinkpads T61/X61; device ID for Macbook sound card., 92HD71BXX Mono Mute Support., 92HD7XXX power management support; add the support of Dell OEM laptops with ALC268., new model for conexant 5045 codec to support benq r55e; add model for Acer Aspire 5315; add Conexant 5051 codec support; add model for Acer Aspire 5310., add model for HP DV9553EG laptop; ALSA HD Audio patch for Intel ICH10 DeviceID's; add Dell T3400 support; add support for Intel SCH; add missing model for HD-audio Cx5045 codec, add support for Samsung Q1 Ultra Vista edition.
• ice1724: Add support of Onkyo SE-90PCI and SE-200PCI.
• soc: ln2440sbc ac97 support.
• Remove sequencer instrument layer.
• Xilinx ML403 AC97 Controller Reference device driver.
• ASoC TLV320AIC3X codec driver.
• usb-caiaq: add support for Kore controller 2.
• sis7019: Support the SiS 7019 Audio Accelerator.
• USB audio suspend support.
• Add Asus Xonar driver.
• Add CMI8788 driver.
• ASoC TLV support, S3c2412 IIS driver
• soc: Preliminary ac97 drivers for Toshiba e800 PDAs.
• Add ASoC drivers for the Freescale MPC8610 SoC.
• ICE1724: Added support for Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 Hifi & HD2, Hercules Fortissimo IV.

Hwmon drivers

• Add support for Texas Instruments/Burr-Brown ADS7828
• Add support for Winbond W83L786NG/NR
• lm87: Add support for the Analog Devices ADM1024
• w83781d: Drop W83627HF support
• coretemp: Add Penryn CPU to coretemp
• New driver for Analog Devices ADT7473 sensor chip

Network drivers

• Add driver for enc28j60 ethernet chip
• b43legacy: LED triggers support, RF-kill support
• e1000e: alternate MAC address support
• Add support for the RDC R6040 Fast Ethernet controller
• E1000: Secondary unicast address support
• Add bnx2x driver for BCM57710
• cxgb3 - Add EEH support
• pasemi_mac: Software-based LRO support, add support for changing mac address, add support for setting MTU
• zd1211rw: port to mac80211
• b43: Changes to enable BCM4311 rev 02 with wireless core revision 13
• libertas: implement suspend and resume, add ethtool support for wake-on-lan configuration
• ixgb: enable sun hardware support for broadcom phy
• iwlwifi: proper monitor support
• sky2: support for Yukon Supreme
• BNX2: Support multiple MSIX IRQs
• ucc_geth: add support for netpoll
• IPoIB: Add send gather support
• IB/core: Add IP checksum offload support
• DM9000: Add initial ethtool support
• ehea: add kdump support
• ipwireless: driver for PC Card 3G/UMTS modem
• bas_gigaset: suspend support
• usb_gigaset: suspend support

USB drivers

• Add support for 4348:5523 Winchiphead USB->RS 232 adapter
• Sierra - Add support for Aircard 881U
• Adding YC Cable USB Serial device to pl2303
• sierra driver - add devices, add support for Onda H600/Zte MF330 datacard to USB Driver for Sierra Wireless
• ftdi-sio: Patch to add vendor/device id for ATK_16IC CCD
• pl2303: add support for RATOC REX-USB60F
• Variant of the Dell Wireless 5520 driver
• add iuu_phoenix driver
• m66592-udc: Add support for SH7722 USBF
• Add Printer Gadget Driver
• Export suspend statistics
• Add support for SuperH OHCI
• usb: ohci-sm501 driver
• Add support for Motorola ROKR Z6 cellphone in mass storage mode

SATA/IDE drivers

• Palmchip BK3710 IDE driver
• pata_ninja32: Cardbus ATA initial support
• pata_legacy: Merge winbond support
• libata: implement drain buffers
• cmd64x: Remove /proc/ide/cmd64x
• cdrom: Add support for Sega Dreamcast GD-ROM
• Add support for the RB500 PATA Compactflash
• ahci: Add Marvell 6121 SATA support
• sata_mv: Enable NCQ, support SoC controllers
• pata_sl82c105: dual channel support
• sata_svw: Add support for HT1100 SATA controller

I2C drivers

• i2c-i801: Implement I2C block read support
• i2c-viapro: Add support for the VT8237S
• tsl2550: Add power management added
• Add support for the PCF8575 chip
• The scheduled I2C RTC driver removal
• Some overdue driver removal

MTD drivers

• Remove Photron PNC-2000 map driver
• NAND

-Add Blackfin BF52x support in bf5xx_nand driver
-pasemi_nand driver
-Marvell Orion device bus NAND controller
-Freescale enhanced Local Bus Controller FCM NAND support

• NOR

-Add support for the SST 39VF1601 flash chip

V4L/DVB

• Add tuner-xc2028 driver
• v4l2: Add support for bus-based I2C drivers
• Add support for MT9V111 on sn9c102
• Add support for the DViCO FusionHDTV Dual Digital 4
• Add support for the DViCO FusionHDTV NANO2 w/ZL10353 and firmware
• Add support for MT352-based DViCO FusionHDTV DVB-T NANO devices
• ivtv: Add AVerMedia EZMaker PCI Deluxe support
• cs5345: New i2c driver
• Add support for the Xceive xc5000 silicon tuner
• Add support for the Hauppauge HVR1500Q
• cx23885: Add support for Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1500., enable EZ-QAM mode for Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1800
• tda18271: Add support for NXP TDA18271HD/C2
• Add Beholder TV 401/405/407/409/505/507/609/M6 support
• cx25840: Add basic CX23885 AVCore support., add basic video support for the HVR1800
• V4L: Add support for Syntek DC1125 webcams
• New card supported (partially): Pinnacle 800i
• zr364xx: add support for Creative DiVi CAM 516
• Support for Twinhan Hybrid DTV-DVB 3056 PCI
• saa7134: add support for the Medion / Creatix CTX948 card
• Adds support for Genius TVGo A11MCE

ACPI drivers

• thinkpad-acpi: add X61t HKEY events
• Create /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts
• Enable MWAIT for C1 idle
• cpuidle: Add a poll_idle method, create processor.latency_factor tunable, default processor.latency_factor=2
• asus_acpi: add support for F3sa
• sony-laptop: add Type4 model
• intel_menlo: introduce new platform specific driver

For a full change-log with all the new features, drivers and improvements, please click here.

The Linux Kernel is the essential part of all Linux Distributions, responsible for resource allocation, low-level hardware interfaces, security, simple communications, and basic file system management.

Linux is a clone of the Unix operating system, initially written from scratch by Linus Torvalds, assisted by a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims to achieve POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance.

You can download the full Linux kernel source archive now from Softpedia.


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