The Best Features Of The Linux 3.10 Kernel

The Linux 3.10 kernel is slowly getting ready for release in the coming weeks. If you haven't been closely following Phoronix in the past few months of Linux 3.10 feature development, here's a brief overview of some of the best and most interesting features to be found in the next version of the Linux kernel.

- The BCache SSD/HDD caching framework has been merged. For those with systems boasting a mix of solid-state drives and traditional hard drives, BCache allows for SSDs to act as a cache to larger but slower traditional HDDs.

- Power management improvements are to be found in the next kernel release. Reducing the Linux kernel's power consumption and making it more competitive to Windows and OS X is always welcome. With the Linux 3.10 kernel is a new AMD frequency-sensitivity power-save bias that should work well on AMD CPUs. Separately, there's ARM improvements too for those out of the x86 world. On a semi-related note, the Linux kernel now has full dynticks support.

- Various DRM driver changes, but perhaps most interesting in the open-source Linux graphics driver world with the Linux 3.10 kernel is UVD video decoding support finally being present. The Linux 3.10 kernel is needed in conjunction with an updated Mesa/Gallium3D stack for taking advantage of hardware-based video playback exposed over VDPAU with Gallium3D.

- Better Intel Haswell Linux support and performance for the brand new CPUs.

- File-system improvements including skinny extents for Btrfs, F2FS changes, and extra XFS protection.

- Many other changes. This kernel actually yields the biggest Linux changes in years.