The Biggest Features Of The Linux 4.7 Kernel

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 24 July 2016 at 08:22 AM EDT. Add A Comment
LINUX KERNEL
If all goes according to plan, the Linux 4.7 kernel will be released before the day is through. Here's a recap of some of the biggest features added for the Linux 4.7 kernel.

You can read Linux 4.7 Brings A Plethora Of New Features for my coverage earlier of all the notable features I found with Linux 4.7 following the close of the merge window. But if you just want a quick overview of the highlights, here they are:

- Radeon RX 480 "Polaris" open-source support! With Linux 4.7 there is all the initial AMDGPU DRM support needed for firing up the RX 480, which can be used in conjunction with the latest Mesa, linux-firmware, and LLVM for having quite suitable open-source support for this newly launched graphics processor.

- A number of new ARM platforms are now supported.

- The Schedutil governor for the CPUFreq scaling driver is new and holds potential for making better CPU frequency scaling decisions based upon scheduler utilization data.

- Async discard is now supported by the core block code.

- Support for various Corsair and ASUS keyboards, among other new peripheral support in Linux 4.7.

- The Microsoft Xbox One Elite Controller is now supported by the mainline Linux kernel.

- The EFI bootloader control driver is pretty nifty.

- The LoadPin security feature.

Find out about the many other Linux 4.7 features via our kernel feature overview.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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