Initiator and chief developer Linus Torvalds has released the first release candidate of the upcoming system kernel Linux 6.1, which among other things will introduce the free programming language Rust alongside C as a second language under Linux as well as new features and hardware will support.
Rust, AMD P-State and new hardware
Linux 6.1, scheduled for release in early to mid-December, whose two-week window for submissions Linus Torvalds opened about two weeks ago with the release of Linux 6.0, is receiving its first official release candidate (RC-1) today. After the current kernel focused on extended support for AMD Ryzen 7000 (test), Core-i-13000 (“Intel Raptor Lake”) and the graphics cards of the first Arc generation (“Alchemist”), the developers are implementing the following new ones Features in Linux 6.1.
- New AMD P-State Drivers (“Patch V5”) < ul class="text-ul text-width">
- The driver is said to offer better energy efficiency than the generic ACPI CPUFreq driver and is intended for Zen 2, Zen 3, Zen 3+ and Zen 4.
- Among other things, Precision Boost and performance are said to have been improved under light to medium loads.
- The free programming language Rust will introduced alongside C as a second language under Linux
As Linus Torvalds states in the official Linux 6.1 RC-1 announcement, are during the two-week window more than 11,000 submissions went into the development of Linux 6.1. It's a medium-sized release this time.
This isn't actually shaping up to be a particularly large release: we "only" have 11.5k non-merge commits during this merge window, compared to 13.5k last time around. So not exactly tiny, but smaller than the last few releases. At least in number of commits.
That said, we've got a few core things that have been brewing for a long time, most notably the multi-gen LRU VM series, and the initial Rust scaffolding (no actual real Rust code in the kernel yet, but the infrastructure is there).
Linus Torvalds
In addition, manufacturers and developers have started working on support for Intel Meteor Lake and Ponte Vecchio and RDNA 3 for Radeon RX 7000 to work.
Release as LTS kernel on December 4 or 11
Linux 6.1 will be released on December 4th or 11th, depending on the number of release candidates, and according to the well-known kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman, will appear as an LTS release with corresponding long-term support. Linux 6.1 will be the last new system kernel in 2022 before the next regular offshoot, Linux 6.2, is to follow in early 2023.
The specialist in Linux and open source provides further information Phoronix website.