14 DAY TRIAL // 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.