IPFire team released IPFire 2.27 Core Update 159, a major release. The latest version comes with a new kernel based on Linux 5.10, an updated toolchain, general bug fixes, and various improvements.
Linux 5.10
The update rebases the IPFire kernel on Linux.10, which is the latest LTS release. The toolchain has been updated to GCC 11.1, glibc 2.33, binutils 2.36.1. The 32 bit ARM architecture has been changed from armv5tel to armv6l. The latest release also features:
- Support for many new drivers, improved support and performance for existing drivers making IPFire more compatible with new, and powerful with existing hardware. Most notably are many network drivers as well as virtualised communication with the hypervisor in the cloud.
- Networking throughput has been increased through zero-copy TCP receive and UDP and Bottleneck Bandwidth and RTT congestion control (BBR). Those changes will also decrease the latency of the firewall in the network when forwarding packets.
- Wireless will have improved throughput and better latency with Airtime Queue Limits which practically enables use of all the “Bufferbloat” algorithms on wireless
- Support for 64-bit ARM hardware has been massively improved and the team was able to drop a large amount of custom patches that have been upstreamed into the Linux kernel.
- The team has improved security of the system through improved protection against CPU hardware bugs additional hardening from attacks from the user-space.