Linux 6.3-rc1 Brings File-System Optimizations, HID-BPF, More Intel & AMD Features
Linux 6.3 is going to be a big kernel with changes such as faster direct I/O for EXT4, sensor monitoring for more newer ASUS motherboards, the AMD-Xilinx XDMA driver has finally been merged, some AMD Zen 4 performance optimizations via Automatic IBRS, proper 8BitDo Pro 2 wired controller support, the Intel TPMI driver was merged, various other Intel updates like to TDX and CXL along with LKGS instruction support, introducing of the Ath12k wireless driver, HID-BPF, IPv4 BIG TCP support, Btrfs performance optimizations, removal of Intel ICC compiler support, and much more. I'll be out with my usual feature write-up to provide a Linux 6.3 feature overview in the next day or so. But as usual there is a lot of happenings each kernel cycle.
Linus Torvalds wrote in today's 6.3-rc1 announcement:
So after several releases where the merge windows had something odd going on, we finally had just a regular "two weeks of just merge window". It was quite nice.
In fact, it was quite nice in a couple of ways: not only didn't I have a hugely compressed merge window where I felt I had to cram as much as possible into the first few days, but the fact that we _have_ had a couple of merge windows where I really asked for people to have everything ready when the merge window opened seems to have set a pattern: the bulk of everything really did come in early.
And again, that just makes the merge window work nicer for me, when I don't sit there waiting, knowing that there's stuff pending that just hasn't had a pull request done yet.
So it all felt rather good. Of course, the fact that I had no machine issues, no holidays, and no travel coming up, then meant that I may have noticed a few more of the "people, please write good commit messages for merges" issues, so there's a possible downside to me not being as hurried as the last few merge windows have been.
Linux 6.3 stable in turn should be out in late April or early May. I'll begin more Linux 6.3 Git kernel testing and benchmarking over the days ahead.
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