Linux 5.19-rc8 Released With More Retbleed Fixes, Intel GuC Firmware Fix

As was expected given all the recent kernel activity, Linux 5.19-rc8 was released today rather than going straight to the Linux 5.19 stable release, which has been diverted now to next Sunday. Linux 5.19-rc8 ships with many last minute fixes for this summer 2022 kernel update.

Most notable with today's Linux 5.19-rc8 release is more Retbleed mitigation fallout fixes from that CPU speculative execution security changes made over the past two weeks. The Retbleed Linux code is now in good shape that it should begin appearing finally in the stable kernel series over the coming days.

The other notable change with Linux 5.19-rc8 is fixing the Intel GuC firmware compatibility so the Intel GuC v69 firmware support is retained while adding support for GuC v70 firmware, rather than breaking backwards compatibility and requiring v70 firmware with Linux 5.19 as originally Intel intended. This stems from the issue I pointed out last week around the Intel GuC firmware breaking Alder Lake P graphics acceleration when using Linux 5.19 Git at the time.

Aside from those two big changes, there is an assortment of smaller fixes throughout the kernel tree as well.

More details on the Linux 5.19-rc8 changes can be found via this afternoon's release announcement.

See my Linux 5.19 feature overview to learn more about this forthcoming kernel release.