Homeowners of Raptor Lake (opens in new tab) and Arc Alchemist (opens in new tab) rigs determined to flee the Microsoft hegemony and discover the world of open-source software program awoke to excellent news as we speak, with the announcement that model 6.0 of the Linux kernel will immediately help their cutting-edge platforms.
It’s additionally excellent news for homeowners of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen3-powered laptops, plus different Arm-based SoCs and Chromebooks, together with the Allwinner H616, present in TV streaming packing containers and the NXP i.MX93 embedded processor board. Raspberry Pi 4 (opens in new tab) customers additionally get a v3d graphics driver, up to date drivers for AMD’s RDNA 3 (opens in new tab) GPUs, RISC-V platforms get extra extensions, and the H.265/HEVC codec has moved to ‘secure’ standing. Rockchip RK3588 gadgets, such because the Pine64 QuartzPro64 (pictured above), additionally obtain an MMC driver for his or her onboard storage.
Greater information that that, nonetheless, is the improved help for the Chinese language LoongArch CPU structure, which obtained tentative backing within the earlier 5.19 kernel, however was unable in addition due to lacking drivers. That’s all mounted in kernel 6.0, opening up the OS household to a complete new set of computer systems. It additionally improves the quantity of {hardware} that can be utilized in Linux on LoongArch, with preliminary help for PCI on the platform. This implies Linux might quickly run on the not too long ago introduced Loongson 16-core server chips (opens in new tab).
The soar from 5.19, the kernel used within the new Ubuntu 22.10 beta (opens in new tab), to six.0 with out going by means of 5.5 alongside the way in which comes from a quirk of Linux overlord Linus Torvalds, who doesn’t wish to see model numbers get too massive. “The key model quantity change is extra about me working out of fingers and toes than it’s about any massive basic modifications,” he wrote in a Linux Kernel Mailing Checklist (opens in new tab) message, including: “After all there’s plenty of varied modifications in 6.0 – we have got over 15k non-merge commits in there in complete.”
Torvalds did, nonetheless, trace at massive issues to come back sooner or later: “Tomorrow I will open the merge window for six.1. In contrast to 6.0, which has quite a lot of pretty core new issues lined up.”
The brand new kernel must be obtainable to put in in main Linux distros with a easy replace as quickly because the package deal maintainers push it by means of. After all, customers of smaller or extra unique flavors of the OS could need to take issues into their very own palms (opens in new tab), however that’s the enjoyment of Linux.