Linux 2.6.33-rc1 Kernel Released

Linus Torvalds has just announced that the merge window for the Linux 2.6.33 kernel has closed and as a result he has pushed out Linux 2.6.33-rc1. The first release candidate for Linux 2.6.33 delivers on a plethora of new code, including the long-awaited Nouveau driver (which Linus mentions in the 2.6.33-rc1 announcement) and many graphics DRM improvements. Among the DRM changes to be delivered by the Linux 2.6.33 kernel include Radeon HDMI audio, R600/700 IRQ support, the KMS page-flipping ioctl, VMware's new driver, Intel driver improvements, and many core enhancements to the Direct Rendering Manager.

Outside of the graphs realm, the Linux 2.6.33 kernel brings CFQ scheduler improvements, new drivers, and other key enhancements. The performance of the Linux 2.6.33 kernel can be monitored on a daily basis through Phoromatic Tracker that just launched from our test farm this week.

Below is the Linux 2.6.33-rc1 kernel release announcement. Going forward with the Linux 2.6.34 kernel and future releases, Linus is looking at making the merge window a few days shorter (11~12 days as opposed to 14) to prevent developers from issuing pull requests so late into the new development cycle.

So the merge window is closed, and -rc1 is out there now.

Talking about the merge window: there were a _lot_ of trees that left their pull requests pretty dang late. Not everything I merged yesterday and today were late pull requests, but a lot of it was. I'm used to have a fairly busy last day of the merge window, but it was a busy last two days this time - definitely worse than usual.

The two-week merge window is _not_ supposed to be "one day merge window after thirteen days of silence". In fact, I think that next time around I'll make the merge window be 11-12 days instead, and people who try to game the system and do a last-minute pull request will get a surprise, and get unceremoniously bumped to 2.6.35 instead.

Anyway, apart from that grumbling, it's been a fairly normal merge window, I think. According to git dirstat (which got fixed to give more accurate numbers), the distribution of changes is pretty much

- 1/3rd staging
- 1/3rd "rest of drivers"
- 1/3rd "everything else"

with about half of that final "everything else" third being arch stuff, and half being random other things (firmware, fs, net).

Notable additions? There's a number of drivers, and depending on which ones you use, you'll find them more or less notable. I personally like how I finally got to merge the Nouveau code, for example. Others will care about other things.

Please give it a good testing, so that we can start figuring out the inevitably regressions,

Linus