Linux kernel is a core of Linux Operating system (OS) it work as interface between hardware and processes for OS. Linux kernel was first developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991 since now many kernel have been released.
This year Linus Torvalds has announced in his mailing list(LKML) about the released of new stable Linux kernel 5.5 codename Kleptomaniac Octopus, for general public which can be directly download from kernel.org
Linux Kernel 5.5 comes with many performance enhancement, security fixes, new and upcoming hardware platform support like: Raspberry Pi 4, Intel processors and Chromebooks.
So What is new in Linux Kernel 5.5?
Kernel developers have mainly focused on enhancing the hardware support and performance, improving the network driver and security during developing the Kernel 5.5.
Linux Kernel 5.5 has below main features which can improve the upcoming many Linux distros performance in future, also existing Linux distros like Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or later will have backport of Kernel 5.5 in upcoming updates. So let’s discuss about Kernel 5.5 features and enhancements:
- Added better hardware support for Raspberry Pi 4, the Ugoos AM6, RK3308, and NanoPi Duo2 boards.
- The new kernel provide drivers for Chrombook for enabling its features like: Wake on Voice, airplane mode LEDs, the keyboard backlight, and Fn (function) key combinations.
- For the gamers two gaming Logitech G15 keyboard supports are added.
- Now it is possible for gamers to overclock the AMD overdrive using NAVI GPU and also improvements are made in Linux kernel schedulers to enhance the performance.
- Better Power management is added for Thunderbolt and Ice lake USB.
- Many enhancement have done in filesystems: XFS, exFAT and Ext4. Now Ext4 support I/O via iomap and fscrypt for smaller block sizes.
- For increasing the security Microsoft Hyper V Linux Virtual Machines can do hibernation and kernel concurrency sanitizer to spot data race conditions.
He is a lazy System Administrator who likes to Automate his task through Shell scripts and Ansible playbooks. He has contributed his many Automations work in Kyndryl and also maintain his own internal company Github repo.
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