14 DAY TRIAL // We are proud to announce today, May 19th, the immediate release of the highly anticipated Linux kernel 2.6.39.
Among the new features included in Linux kernel 2.6.39 we can mention new drivers for high-end AMD graphics cards, ipsets to simplify firewall maintenance and implementation, improved EXT4 file system, new drivers for better hardware support, and lots of bug fixes.
"So it's delayed a few days, and I really was struggling with the decision of whether I wanted to cut a final release at all: it could easily have made more sense to just do an -rc8."
"However, since I'm going to be at LinuxCon Japan in two weeks, the choice for me ended up whether I should just release, or drag it out *three* more weeks, or have some really messy merge window with a break in between." - said Linus Torvalds in the official announcement.
Highlights of Linux Kernel 2.6.39:
· Support for Cayman family AMD graphics chips (Radeon HD 6790 - 6970) - 2D and 3D acceleration is still not available; · Z compression support for the Nouveau driver; · Better support for GMA500 Intel chips; · Support for next-get ipset; · Support for Intel 2000 series WLAN chips; · Implemented asynchronous processing for KVM page faults; · Forced Threaded Interrupt Handlers; · The Multiple Page-IO Submissions option is used by default for EXT4 filesystems to improve scalability and performance; · Added Batched Discard functionality to the Btrfs filesystem, for SDD unused storage areas information; · New Pstore (platform-persistent storage) filesystem; · Extended LIO target implementation, for SPC-4 SCSI emulations; · Support for Intel's "Panther Point" chipsets; · Improved SCSI Logical Block Provisioning interfaces; · Support for USB 3.0 hubs; · Terratec DMX 6Fire USB driver; · Griffin FireWave surround sound system driver; · Technisat USB 2.0 DVB-S/S2 receiver driver; · Divio webcam driver; · SABI driver; · WMI driver for recent ASUS netbooks.
These are just a few of the new features available in Linux kernel 2.6.39. For a complete list of all the newly supported devices, newly added drivers, etc., please visit the official changelog.
You can download Linux kernel 2.6.39 sources right now from Softpedia.