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Linus Torvalds introduced at present the ultimate launch of the Linux 6.6 kernel sequence as a significant replace that introduces a number of new options, up to date and new drivers for higher {hardware} help, and different modifications.
Highlights of Linux kernel 6.6 embody the long-awaited Shadow Stack {hardware} safety function to guard your Intel CPUs in opposition to stack-overwrite assaults, a brand new firmware-attributes driver for altering BIOS settings from inside Linux on HP gadgets, a brand new eventfs subsystem for higher reminiscence effectivity of the tracing subsystem, and new IIO and Intel IVSC MEI drivers.
Linux kernel 6.6 additionally comes with help for altering charger mode, center fan, and eGPU settings for ASUS gadgets, help for keyboard backlight management on extra Lenovo IdeaPad gadgets, help for brand new Mellanox-powered gadgets, in addition to help for brand new gadget tree interfaces, help for kernel address-space format randomization, KASLR help, and help for the BPF prog pack allocator on the RISC-V structure.
On high of that, Linux kernel 6.6 comes with zoned block gadget and compression help enhancements for the F2FS file system, help for shared mmaps in no-cache mode for the FUSE file system, fixes for netfilter and BPF, quite a few fixes for the AMDGPU driver, regression fixes for MIDI 2.0 helpand higher Intel RAPL energy administration.
A just-in-time BPF compiler has been added to the PA-RISC structure, hotplug SMT help is now out there for the PowerPC structure, the mount API gained a brand new flag to stop a mount from sharing in-kernel superblocks with different mounts, help for SEV-SNP and TDX company are actually supported on Hyper-V, and the io_uring subsystem acquired preliminary help for community operations.
KASAN, KCOV, KDB, KFENCE, KGDB, and different kernel instruments are actually supported on the LoongArch structure, help for zoned-storage gadgets landed for the ublk user-space block driver, the tmpfs filesystem now helps quota, direct I/O, and prolonged attributes, help for NFSv4 write delegations arrive for the in-kernel NFS server, and the in-kernel SMB3 file system launched in Linux kernel 5.15 is now lastly thought-about secure.
There’s additionally improved {hardware} help on Linux kernel 6.6 because of USB MIDI 2 gadget help, help for the Cirrus Logic CS42L43 audio codec, help for Group Multi-Coloration (GMC) LEDs, help for the GameSir T4 Kaleid controller, KFENCE, KASAN, KGDB, and KDB help for the LoongArch structure, and help for NVIDIA T4 GPUs to make use of Secondary Bus Reset.
Linux kernel 6.6 is obtainable for obtain proper now straight from Linus Torvalds’ Git tree or from the kernel.org web site. Nevertheless, you’ll need to compile it in your GNU/Linux distribution. If that’s not your cup of tea, you’ll have to attend for Linux 6.6 to reach in your distro’s secure software program repositories.
