14 DAY TRIAL // On July 24, 2016, Linus Torvalds announced the final Linux kernel 4.7 release, which brought an important number of new features, improvements, and updated drivers over previous versions.
Prominent features of the Linux 4.7 kernel include an updated AMDGPU video driver with support for AMD Radeon RX 480 GPUs, LoadPin, and a brand new security module that makes sure the modules loaded by the Linux kernel all originate from the same file system. Moreover, there's also the ability for Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) programs to attach to tracepoints, as well as support for generating virtual USB Device Controllers in USB/IP.
Linux kernel 4.7 also comes with support for parallel directory lookups, support for generating virtual USB Device Controllers in USB/IP, and production-ready sync_file fencing mechanism for the Android mobile OS. Also worth mentioning are the "schedutil" frequency governor for the cpufreq dynamic frequency scaling subsystem, support for call chains of events in the perf trace tool, and firmware upgrade support using the EFI "Capsule" mechanism.
Collabora engineers contributed 36 patches to Linux kernel 4.7
Each new Linux kernel release is possible only thanks to the amazing contributions from various entities. Collabora developer Gustavo Padovan reveals in his latest blog post some of the contributions made by various Collabora developers in the new Linux 4.7 kernel release. According to him, a total of Collabora engineers contributed no less than 36 patches to Linux kernel 4.7.
"Linux Kernel 4.7 was released this week with a total of 36 contributions from five Collabora engineers. It includes the first contributions from Helen as Collaboran and the first ever contributions to the kernel from Robert Foss," says Gustavo Padovan in the blog announcement, where he also lists some of the most important patches provided to Linux kernel 4.7 by a total of five Collabora engineers.
Among the contributions added by Collabora's devs, we can mention support for the Analogix anx78xx DRM Bridge, patches to fix two SD Card-related issues on OMAP igep00x0 hardware, the implementation of a separate module for the V4L2 Test Pattern Generator, improvements to the DRM documentation, DRM/VC4 (Raspberry Pi) fixes, intel-gpu-tools support for various platforms, and fixes for two Rockchip-related problems.