Linux 3.10 Kernel Yields Biggest Changes In Years

The Linux 3.10 kernel is going to be massive with the just-released "-rc1" version being the biggest in the last several years (or perhaps ever), according to Linus Torvalds. This massive change-rate is based at least according to commit count and potentially actual lines too.

The Linux 3.10-rc1 release announcement doesn't cover in too much detail all about the great merges that happened, but fortunately there's already been extensive Phoronix coverage on the matter over the past two weeks. Highlights of the Linux 3.10 kernel include:

General:

- Full DynTicks support has been merged as a major core feature of the Linux kernel.

- KVM virtualization improvements.

- Audio/sound driver updates.

- Improved ARM support, including better ARM 64-bit support.

- Many cryptography optimizations for the Linux crypto subsystem.

- AMD power management improvements.

- Staging driver changes and new activity.

File-Systems:

- The BCache SSD/HDD caching framework is now available to offer up some interesting new opportunities for systems boasting a mix of SSD and HDD storage.

- Improved eCryptfs AES-NI performance for modern AMD/Intel x86 CPUs with this accelerated AES instruction set.

- Skinny extents come to Btrfs with the Linux 3.10 kernel. There's also some quota rebuild work.

- Major F2FS changes for Samsung's Flash-Friendly File-System.

- Extra protection for XFS.

Graphics:

- Various DRM driver changes. There's also early Nouveau driver benchmarks and Radeon OpenGL benchmarks.

- The Radeon DRM gets golden registers and UVD video decoding and RadeonSI tiling support.

- There's the introduction of the QXL KMS driver.

Plus there's a heck of a lot of other Linux 3.10 kernel changes that will be covered (and benchmarked) on Phoronix in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!