Linux 5.10.5 Released - It Disables FBCON Accelerated Scrolling

Linux 5.10.5 LTS is out today with at least one rather interesting addition.

Linux 5.10.5 picks up the patch talked about back in October to drop accelerated scrolling from the Linux frame-buffer console (FBCON) since it's riddled with bugs and not widely used.

Bugs continue to be discovered within the FBCON code, particularly around the accelerated scrolling. Thus the code is being removed since it's not widely used and due to these code issues.

The main user of FBCON accelerated scrolling is the open-source Nouveau (NVIDIA) driver. OMAPDRM and GMA500 are the only other drivers that supported frame-buffer console accelerated scrolling in some capacity.

Simply removing all of the FBCON accelerated scrolling code will now allow for further code clean-ups.

Linux 5.11 already carries the patch dropping the accelerated scrolling while today's Linux 5.10.5 release back-ports the change to the current stable series that also marks the current Long Term Support kernel.

There are also a number of other fixes with today's Linux 5.10.5 release.