Features Thus Far For The Linux 4.1 Kernel

We're just into week one of two for the Linux 4.1 kernel merge window. Here's a look at the pull requests thus far that are making for an exciting Linux 4.1 when it comes to new features and functionality.

Among the issued pull requests thus far for Linux 4.1 that have caught my attention over the past seven days include:

- Better power management support and various PM improvements for newer ARM and x86 hardware.

- Continued work on Intel Skylake support, including Turbostat support now for this next-generation Intel micro-architecture.

- AMD Bulldozer entropy improvements.

- Full dynticks support for KVM guests.

- eBPF programs can attach to Kprobes.

- Linux audio modernization work and new device support.

- New Wacom hardware support and other HID improvements.

- NCQ autosense support for new drives.

- The TraceFS file-system.

- File-system level encryption for EXT4.

- Various improvements to the F2FS flash file-system.

- Enhancements to the multi-queue block layer.

- Support for GCC 6 and future major revisions of the GCC compiler.

- Nouveau firmware support for the GeForce GTX 750 series.

- Clean-ups in staging thanks to GNOME OPW / Outreachy.

- x86/ASM code cleaning and restructuring that's potentially risky.

- New is the PMEM persistent memory driver thanks to Intel.

Still to come in the next week are the DRM changes, the Btrfs file-system updates, and more. There's also been the KDBUS pull request for Linux 4.1 but it's not clear yet if it will be accepted for this release.

Stay tuned for more Linux 4.1 feature coverage over the next week followed by our usual benchmarks and more!