There Are A Ton Of New Features/Improvements Heading Towards Linux 4.19

While the Linux 4.18 kernel is still likely a week and a half out from being released at least, a ton of new material has been staged already ahead of the Linux 4.19 cycle that has us excited.

Among the work that's been queuing for Linux 4.19 that has us excited includes:

- The many DRM/graphics changes, which is covered in its own article given the number of improvements and our close coverage of the Direct Rendering Manager subsystem.

- Support for new and exciting input devices like the Microsoft Surface Dial and Dell Totem, which should be of interest to some digital artists, although user-space still needs to make use of this new form of input devices.

- A new framework coming in Linux 4.19 is the idle injection framework.

- Another new framework for Linux 4.19 is the FPGA Device Feature List.

- A third framework is the Google Gasket Framework as a new way of writing kernel device drivers and trying to stick most of that into user-space.

- In the name of security, x86 32-bit KPTI support in order to fend off the Meltdown vulnerability albeit at the cost of performance.

- Networking CAKE has merged for yielding potentially better performance on Linux networking router boxes.

- The USB Type-C DisplayPort Alternate Mode driver is landing for hardware not already allowing this feature to work on Linux thanks to its smarter firmware.

- A new driver to support the Cougar 500k gaming keyboard.

- Samsung Galaxy S support with the needed DeviceTree additions, assuming you can still even find this eight year old Android smartphone.

- Raspberry Pi devices on Linux 4.19 will now have the mainline kernel support for being able to report under-voltage issues.

Plus a whole lot more is sure to come that just has been flying under my radar so far, but stay tuned to the Phoronix coverage of the Linux 4.19 kernel merge window activity in August; first we need to see Linux 4.18 depart the runway.