With Linux 6.16 expected to be released on Sunday unless an extra week of testing is deemed necessary, the Linux 6.17 merge window will then kickoff the next day. Based on monitoring the various subsystem “-next” trees and other mailing list activity, here is a look at many of the changes expected for Linux 6.17 barring last minute issues or other objections raised by Linus Torvalds.
Linux 6.17 will be another exciting release with a ton of great work building up from multiple exciting Intel Xe graphics driver improvements, AMD SmartMux coming to Linux, various performance enhancements, several new driver additions / hardware support from AMD and Intel and others, and much more.
Below is a look at some of the material on my radar that should be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.17 merge window based on the code positioning within Git repositories. But there is always subject to change / objection from Torvalds or other kernel developers. In any event stay tuned to Phoronix to learn more about the many exciting changes that get merged for Linux 6.17. Linux 6.17 stable in turn should come by early October and is the kernel expected to power Ubuntu 25.10 and other late 2025 Linux distributions.
– The ability to reboot Apple M1 / M2 Macs from Linux thanks to upstreaming the Apple System Management Controller driver (Apple SMC). There are also a few other Apple SoC / Device Tree changes.
– Btrfs performance improvements as well as experimental support for large folios to help in testing it out.
– EROFS metadata compression support.
– Bringing AMD SmartMux functionality to Linux for enhancing the hybrid laptop GPU support.
– Smarter cache flushing for AMD SEV KVM VMs.
– The AMD Hardware Feedback driver looks all set for improving heterogeneous CPU support for select AMD Ryzen SKUs with Linux 6.17.
– AMD CPUID faulting support.
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– AMD compute driver improvements for old Polaris and Hawaii GPUs.
– Shortening up the AMDGPU hibernation/resume time handling for large multi-GPU servers.
– SR-IOV support for Battlemage graphics cards as one of the new Intel Battlemage features coming as part of Project Battlematrix.
– Experimental flip queue support for the Intel graphics driver.
– Intel Wildcat Lake graphics support as well as multi-device preparations. That multi-device GPU work is also being done as part of Project Battlematrix.
– Intel Xe3 graphics enabled by default ahead of the upcoming Panther Lake launch.
– Intel EDAC support for Granite Rapids D, Wildcat Lake, and Raptor Lake HX as well as Bartlett Lake S.
– Upstreaming the Intel VSEC / PMT discovery driver.
– Enabling Intel DG1 graphics by default as a long overdue change.
– Wake-On-Touch support for the Intel THC driver.
– Continued work on the NOVA driver for the future open-source NVIDIA Linux kernel driver.
– DRM Panic support for the Bochs driver.
– Improved Qualcomm Adreno GPU driver support especially for Snapdragon X SoCs.
– The Lenovo WMI Gaming Series Drivers are being introduced for enhancing the Lenovo Legion Go S handheld support and other Lenovo Legion gaming devices on Linux.
– A new driver for Linux 6.17 is the introduction of the OVMF Debug Log driver to help in analyzing UEFI VM boot issues.
– Support for the old Marvell PXA1908 SoC found in older smartphones/tablets.
– Broadcom BCM5770X networking driver support.
– A GTK3 port of the Linux kernel’s gconfig utility.
– Improved TTM memory management eviction.
– Dropping of the pktcdvd packet writing CD/DVD driver.
– UEFI SBAT support looks ready for mainline.
– Single RunQueue Proxy Execution is expected to be finally merged.
– Apple x86 Touch Bar Input and Apple Magic Keyboard USB-C support is ready for Linux 6.17.
– Sensor monitoring for the ASUS ProArt X870E-CREATOR WIFI motherboard.
– Raspberry Pi RP1 PCI device support for the mainline driver.
– Attack Vector Controls look like they will finally be merged for Linux 6.17.
– Finished the removal of old OpenMoko driver code.
Additional Linux 6.17 feature material is expected for what I may have missed in my monitoring, so stay tuned for the pull request coverage during the Linux 6.17 merge window. After that, onto Linux 6.17 kernel benchmarking at Phoronix.
