On Sunday, May 22, Linus Torvalds launched Linux kernel 5.18. According to The Register, Torvalds, who is the principal force behind the development of the Linux operating system, said the release was typical of those he made for each of the eight release candidates: no bad surprises this time, no significant or difficult additions, and no bugs hampered the development process.
Before getting enthusiastic about the upcoming release 5.19, Torvalds advised developers to "run boring old plain 5.18."
What Are the New Features on Linux Kernel 5.18?
Some of the new features found in version 5.18, which were listed below :
- A driver for AMD EPYC CPUs' Host System Management Port
- A fix for a long-standing issue with the Ceph file system that resulted in excessive CPU usage
- More virtual memory support for RISC-V
- Support for the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
- Support for Tesla's fully autonomous driving chip
- Foundational work for Intel's discrete graphics hardware
Let's go over the essential features and changes in Linux 5.18 in more detail.
As per 9to5Linux, Linux's latest version improves the io_uring subsystem, improves the random-number generator feature, adds a new keep_last_dots mount option to the exFAT file system so that it no longer strips trailing periods from file names, and adds RSA encryption support to the virtio-crypto device.
In addition, switch to the C11 compiler standard, support for "user events" in the tracing system, support for Intel's "hardware feedback interface," indirect branch tracking support for the x86 architecture, support for AMD's "host system management port," support for 64-bit integrity checksums on NVMe devices, and better process scheduling performance on AMD Zen CPUs are among the highlights of Linux kernel 5.18.
Meanwhile, support for the "Sv57" page-table format, a new perf implementation that uses the SBI PMU and Sscofpmf extensions, support for restartable sequences, and support for the SBI CPU-idle extension are all included for RISCV architectures.
In Linux kernel 5.18, 32-bit PowerPC systems now have:
- live patching support, as well as support for the Intel software-defined silicon driver, support for the BPF program-packing memory allocator
- built-in support for NFSv3 in the NFS file system
- ID-mapped mounts to the F2FS file system
- a new fprobe function entry/exit probe mechanism for probing multiple functions with a single probe handler based on ftrace.
Furthermore, the Linux kernel 5.18 deprecates support for the ReiserFS file system, improves the bridge subsystem with support for multiple spanning trees, and adds fragment support to the express data path (XDP) mechanism.
What Can You Expect on Linux Version 5.19?
The Register mentioned that the merge window for kernel 5.19 is now open, which means Torvalds will deliver another version of the project in nine or ten weeks. It appears to have plenty of support for upcoming GPUs, as well as additional enhancements for Apple's M1 silicon and ongoing work to make Intel's Alder Lake CPUs.
