New Features Of The Linux 4.2 Kernel

Disks / File-Systems:

- NCQ TRIM has been improved and can now be forced to be enabled/disabled if you have a poorly-supported solid-state drive.

- Performance improvements for GFS2, the Linux cluster-focused Global File System 2.

- Clean-ups and fixes for the EXT4 file-system.

- F2FS per-file encryption that builds upon the encryption design laid by EXT4 within the Linux 4.1 kernel.

- Quota updates and fixes for Btrfs.

- The start of FUSE scalability improvements for those relying upon file-systems run from user-space.

- DAX support for XFS and other changes there.

Other:

- Numerous audio improvements.

- ACPI 6 Non-Volatime Memory Device (NV-DIMM) support along with other ACPI6 and power management improvements.

- Input device improvements including support for hte Logitech M560 and Sony Motion Controller / Sony Navigation Controller of the PlayStation 3/4.

- Xbox Wireless Controller LEDs now work, there's a new Weida WDT87XX touch-screen driver, and other input improvements. The LEDs working on the XBox Wireless Controller with the XPad driver is thanks to Valve Software.

- Various x86 platform driver updates.

- UEFI ESRT support (EFI System Resource Table) as one of the requirements for allowing UEFI system firmware updates to be applied from the Linux desktop in a vendor-neutral and reliable manner. Expect the first user-friendly bits of this functionality in Fedora 23.

- The usual smothering of staging area changes.

- Performance improvements for non-transparent bridging (NTB).

I think that about covers most of it... If there's anything I missed, feel free to comment on this article with the changes you're most excited about. Over on LinuxBenchmarking.com continue to be daily benchmarks of the newest Linux mainline kernel Git code, though a number of the systems have been borked for the past few days on the newest Git code with widespread kernel panics, but will almost surely be fixed up in the next few days. Other Linux 4.2 benchmarks will happen at Phoroniux.com in the days and weeks ahead.