Features Expected For Linux 5.13 From Apple M1 To FreeSync HDMI To AMD Aldebaran

If all goes well Linux 5.12 will be released tomorrow and in turn will kick off the Linux 5.13 merge window (otherwise 5.12-rc8 will be issued and the stable then a week later). In any case once the Linux 5.13 merge window does open there are a lot of prominent changes expected.

In our original monitoring and reporting on work queuing up in various "-next" subsystem branches ahead of Linux 5.13, here is what has us excited for the next kernel:

- Initial support for the Apple M1 "Apple Silicon" SoC and 2020 hardware platforms. The Apple M1 support on Linux remains a work in progress overall.

- Intel continues driver work on their discrete GPU support.

- Intel Alder Lake S graphics enablement.

- Generic USB Display Driver "GUD" is coming for interesting use-cases.

- Various new AMDGPU driver features including FreeSync HDMI support as well as initial Aldebaran support.

- AMD CPU power metrics are no longer restricted to root.

- MSM driver support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon SC7280.

- Keyboard/touchpad support for newer Microsoft Surface laptops and the DTX driver.

- Preparing for OpenBMC support for a low-cost motherboard in hopes of helping OpenBMC development.

- Gigabyte WMI temperature driver for newer Gigabyte motherboards is being introduced.

- NZXT Kraken water cooling driver for exposing various sensors under the mainline kernel.

- Realtek RTL8156 2.5G Ethernet controller support along with the RTL8153C/RTL8153D models.

- XDP support for Intel's IGC network driver.

- Reducing some network overhead caused by Retpolines.

- The new Linux WWAN framework.

- Support for secret memory areas would be one of the more controversial changes albeit is disabled by default

- SiFive FU740 PCIe support for that SoC found in the SiFive HiFive Unmatched RISC-V development board.

- RISC-V XIP support.

- EXT4 support for both casefolding and encryption enabled at the same time.

- Randomizing the kernel stack at each system call option.

- Also looking like it could be sent in for 5.13 is Intel's bus lock detection work.

- HP Platform Profile support for HP laptops.

- VirtIO Bluetooth driver is new along with a VirtIO sound driver.

- Better support for Thrustmaster steering wheels.

- Loongson 2K1000 support is long overdue for mainline.

- Fixed handling of unused ACPI power resources.

- Tweaking of Ice Lake Xeon power management.

- Early work towards Intel Lunar Lake.

- Much faster MD RAID10 DISCARD handling.

- The new Intel kcpuid utility for reporting CPU features.

- The removal of Intel WiMAX support.

Linux 5.13 will be another big kernel release and the stable debut of it should happen in June. Stay tuned for the upcoming Linux 5.13 merge window to see if there are any upsets and what other features may get merged over the two week period. Following that, it's on to Linux 5.13 kernel benchmarking.