Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has just released the second release candidate of Linux 6.16. Following the release of Linux 6.15, developers submitted their new features to be merged with Linux 6.16. These release candidates are focused on polishing the kernel before release, following the merging of new features.
In his weekly mailing list post, Torvalds noticed that things were pretty quiet this week and that this could be due to developers taking a summer vacation or just taking a break following a large merge window a few weeks ago. This isn’t uncommon at this point in the cycle and Torvalds expects more activity next week.
Networking and bcachefs dominate changes
The second release candidate, despite being small, still brings some notable changes, namely network drivers, Bluetooth drivers, and bcachefs, a copy-on-write filesystem for Linux.
The improvements to network drivers have a direct impact on end users, it means that newer networking hardware works out of the box when you install Linux and existing problematic drivers get fixed.
There were also improvements made to the Rust infrastructure and core networking changes. Implementing Rust in the kernel is good for users as it has memory safety built in, leaving hackers less to attack in Linux systems. Rust has received backlash by some opinionated Linux developers who don’t want to learn a new language, but it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.
Under the hood: specific fixes
This week, a diverse set of developers have contributed fixes to the kernel that improve kernel stability, Bluetooth connectivity, file sharing over SMB, and virtualization performance. Some specific changes this week include:
- Fixes for CPU burning, firmware stats, and use-after-free (UAF) issues with the ath11k and ath12k Wi-Fi drivers.
- Various fixes for UAF, NULL pointer differences and advertising issues in Bluetooth drivers.
- Improvements to Server Message Block (SMB) related to directory cache reuse and a fix for performance regression with deferred closes.
- In KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), there are fixes for SEV-SNP support, memory pre-faulting, and ARM64 selftests.
The SMB fixes are notable because it's an important protocol in networked Windows environments. It helps with file sharing, printer sharing, and Active Directory integration. By improving Linux’s support for this protocol, readers using SMB in Linux to talk to Windows machines will have a smoother experience.
Ongoing development
Linux 6.16 is due to get seven or eight release candidates over the cycle so there are now five or six weeks until the stable version arrives. Even when it is out, most people’s first use of this kernel will be when distributions decide to ship it, as they can be tricky to install manually.
Stay tuned each week as we bring you all the new changes which each new release candidate.
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