Finnish-American software developer, creator, and main developer of the Linux kernel Linus Torvalds announced the release of the new Linux kernel 5.15 LTS update on Halloween! The new update brings significant changes such as a new NTFS drive and Intel’s Alchemist discrete graphics support but also focuses on ARM-based system improvements and optimizations as well.
Linux kernel 5.15 LTS
Since the new release would bring significant changes as mentioned before, a delay for the update was rumored. But Linus Torvalds announced that there isn’t going to be any delays and update would arrive as scheduled. As for the changes with the update, Linus Torvalds, Developer of Linux Kernel said,
“Anyway, the last week of 5.15 was mainly networking and gpu fixes, with some random sprinkling of other things (a few btrfs reverts, some kvm updates, minor other fixes here and there – a few architecture fixes, couple of tracing, small driver fixes etc). Full shortlog appended.
This release may have started out with some -Werror pain, but it calmed down fairly quickly and on the whole 5.15 was fair small and calm. Let’s hope for more of the same – without Werror issues this time – for the upcoming merge window.”
The update consists of improvements such as;
- Intel Alder Lake support has been enhanced. Improvement is done by adding support for the Intel TCC drivers.
- Apple M1 support has been enhanced. IOMMU driver of the Apple M1 chip was merged with Linux Kernel 5.15 to enhance Linux functionality.
- AMD GPU/CPU enhancements. Temperature monitoring, a new audio driver for Van Gogh APU, and RDNA2 graphics cards support have been added by the AMDGPU kernel driver.
- NTFS3 driver support has been added.
Besides these main enhancements and added supports, Linux Kernel 5.15 also brings optimizations and improvements such as EXT4 filesystems, Btrf optimizations, and FUSE support for mounting active devices.