Updated Zstd Implementation Merged For Linux 6.2

It finally happened! An updated Zstd kernel implementation based on Zstd v1.5 upstream has been merged for the in-development Linux 6.2 to provide better performance and reliability for Zstd compression/decompression use-cases from compressed firmware to transparent file-system compression.

The Zstd code within the Linux kernel hasn't been updated in a year at which point it was updated to the Zstd 1.4.10 state, which was already then years behind the upstream Zstd state. With Linux 6.2, the Zstd kernel code has been updated against v1.5.2 upstream for being close to parity with that upstream code maintained by Facebook/Meta. This should mean faster Zstd compress/decompression for in-kernel users of the Zstandard compression algorithm.

Zstandard Logo

This had been the plan and finally over the weekend the pull request had been submitted. Just a few minutes ago it was merged by Linus Torvalds.

This should yield better performance for Zstd-compressed kernel images and the various other users. With this kernel implementation also being generated in a near automatic manner from the upstream Zstd code, hopefully moving forward the kernel implementation will be able to stay better updated against its upstream.