Looking Forward To The Linux 3.15 Kernel

While there's a lot of great features for the Linux 3.14 kernel, out on the horizon we are already starting to get excited about the prospects for Linux 3.15.

Among the likely/hopeful features to have your eyes on for Linux 3.15 kernel features include:

- Intel Broadwell graphics improvements. Intel OTC developers delivered stable Broadwell graphics code for Linux 3.14, but with Linux 3.15 will be more improvements, particularly for improved power management and other highlights. Linux 3.15 will also have other Intel DRM improvements.

- Valve-contributed input driver improvements and other new HID device improvements.

- The open-source support code for AMD VCE video encoding, which has already been revised and there's adjoining user-space code ready within Mesa for the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver and new OpenMAX state tracker.

- Various Radeon DRM improvements.

- We're hopeful for seeing DMA-BUF cross-device synchronization.

- The potential mainlining of the BFQ Scheduler.

- Improved documentation for the DRM subsystem.

- DRM render-nodes by default.

- The very interesting and promising SimpleDRM driver.

We should have a better idea of other Linux kernel changes (particularly for the other areas of the kernel that we pay less attention to on a daily basis) when the merge window for Linux 3.15 opens in the next week, if all goes according to schedule and there is not any extra 3.14 RCs issued.

What's unlikely to be seen from Linux 3.15 will be the mainlining of the Tux3 or Reiser4 file-systems, still no VIA kernel mode-setting driver, Nouveau re-clocking / dynamic power management still likely won't make a premiere, and we don't even know at this time whether there will be any initial hardware enablement support for NVIDIA's Maxwell GPU series.

Stay tuned for the latest Linux kernel development news and benchmarks at Phoronix.