With Linux 7.0 expected for release later today, in turn the Linux 7.1 merge window will kick off for the two week period of landing all sorts of exciting new features, changes, and removal of old features from the kernel. Here is a look at some of what is on the table for the Linux 7.1 merge window.
While the changes still need to be pulled by Linus Torvalds once the Linux 7.1 merge window opens, below is a look at much of what is expected to land for this next kernel cycle. Based on the monitoring of the various “-next” subsystem/feature branches and mailing list activity at Phoronix, here are a number of the changes expected for Linux 7.1. From beginning to remove i486 CPU support to new Intel and AMD CPU features, improving old AMD APU support, retiring UDP-Lite, continued enablement of the NVIDIA Nova driver, and a lot more… Linux 7.1 is sure to be another very exciting kernel cycle.
– Linux 7.1 is expected to begin removing Intel 486 CPU support for those old and obsolete but nostalgic relics.
– Enabling Intel FRED by default for better performance on new Intel Panther Lake CPUs.
– Raising the minimum required Rust version when building the Linux kernel with Rust programming language support.
– Retiring of the UDP-Lite code from the Linux networking subsystem and the resulting cleansed code should be faster for UDP than before.
– Lenovo Legion HID drivers are expected to be mainlined.
– Continued work on the NVIDIA Nova driver.
– Linux 7.1 will power off the system by default if a fatal ACPI error occurs.
– AMD Kaveri / Kabini / Mullins APUs will now default to using the AMDGPU driver rather than the legacy Radeon kernel graphcs driver. This means better performance for these old AMD APUs, RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box, and other improvements.
– A multi-SDMA engine optimization for AMDGPU with Linux 7.1.
– AMD continues preparing the graphics support for their next-gen hardware like more AMD GFX12.1 enablement.
– per-process memory usage queries for the AMDXDNA driver used by Ryzen AI NPUs.
– Power estimate reporting for Ryzen AI NPUs.
– New features for the AMD P-State CPU frequency scaling driver.
– Linux 7.1 KVM to expose AVX-512 BMM for guest VMs with AVX-512 BMM being a new ISA feature of upcoming AMD Zen 6 processors.
– FSMOUNT_NAMESPACE support as a new fsmount() flag.
– The Intel Xe driver is improving memory pressure and out-of-memory behavior for vRAM with the Linux 7.1 kernel.
– Enabling transparent hugepages for device pages with the Intel Xe driver as a big improvement for Shared Virtual Memory usage.
– Preparations for Intel Nova Lake P graphics.
– Intel’s graphics driver is preparing for UHBR DP tunnels.
– Zstd offloading support for the Intel QAT driver for QuickAssist accelerators.
– A lot of Intel Xe3 graphics improvements for Linux 7.1.
– The Intel QAT driver is also preparing for the wireless mode support with QAT Gen6 hardware.
– A safeguard for Intel NPUs to avoid a single program exhausting all NPU resources.
– A small but useful debugging feature for AMD Zen systems.
– Many MediaTek MT76 WiFi driver improvements.
– A new Lenovo laptop fan driver is coming for better fan speed monitoring across different Lenovo laptop models.
– The Bitland WMI driver for enabling more functionality on laptops from this controversial Chinese ODM.
– More features on the mainline kernel for TUXEDO Computers laptops thanks to ongoing work to the Uniwill platform driver.
– More SpacemiT K3 RVA23 SoC enablement.
– HDMI display support for the RISC-V BeagleV Ahead SBC.
– There is also HDMI support for the Lichee Pi 4A RISC-V board.
– The RISC-V XIP kernel feature is being removed as it’s recurringly broken for long periods of time.
– Improvements for the Adreno X2-85 GPU used by the Snapdragon X2 laptop SoCs.
– Adding a DRM dedicated CRTC background color property.
– Linux 7.1 is set to address an existing kernel limitation of around one battery per HID device maximum. Linux will now be able to support multiple batteries per HID device in better handling modern hardware.
– Sched_EXT is expected to prioritize SMT siblings for better performance and separately tighter control when tasks land on a CPU.
– Sensor monitoring for more ASUS desktop motherboards.
– Reducing the HRTICK timer overhead.
– Preparations for improved instruction-based sampling with AMD Zen 6 CPUs.
– New VeriSilicon DC8200 and Coreboot frame-buffer drivers via the DRM tree.
– Support for extended attributes on sockets for supporting new GNOME and systemd functionality.
– Sub-scheduler support for cgroup is looking like it will land for Linux 7.1.
Stay tuned for coverage of the Linux 7.1 merge window for other changes to land over the next two weeks. Once the Linux 7.1 merge window passes it’s then time to move on with Linux 7.1 performance benchmarking.
