While Allwinner Technology isn't known as one of the most gracious contributors to the Linux kernel, their continued work on the "pstore_block" kernel patches will be of interest to many especially in the ARM/embedded space and just not for those using Allwinner SoCs.

In helping to build better defenses against this side channel vulnerability, Julian Stecklina of Amazon Germany (who previously co-discovered the "LazyFP" vulnerability last year) has posted demonstrator code for the Level 1 Terminal Fault (L1TF) vulnerability against the Linux kernel.

Linus Torvalds has released the third weekly release candidate for the upcoming Linux 5.0 kernel release.

Klibc has seen some new activity recently and that has resulted in the first new release to this minimal standard C library subset in a half-decade.

Last week I reported on ZFS On Linux breaking with Linux 5.0 due to some kernel symbols sought by this out-of-tree file-system driver no longer being exported and the upstream developers not willing to adjust for the ZoL code. That's still the case but the ZFS On Linux developers have a patch so at least the file-system driver will be able to build on Linux 5.0.

Linus Torvalds has just released the second weekly release candidate for the upcoming Linux 5.0 kernel.

The first point release to the two-week-old Linux 4.20 kernel is now available.

Not making it for the Linux 5.0 kernel but continuing to be revised is atomic replace functionality for the livepatching code. The Linux livepatch atomic replace feature allows for cumulative patches and the ability to remove a patch lower in the stack / patch series.

While the Linux 5.0 kernel merge window (nee Linux 4.21) just closed this past Sunday, already there are Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver updates queuing for DRM-Next to then premiere with the Linux 5.1 kernel cycle in about two months.

Linus Torvalds ended the Linux 4.21 merge window on Sunday evening and decided to go ahead and rename it to Linux 5.0. Linux 5.0-rc1 is now available to begin the testing process for this next kernel release that will officially debut around the end of February or early March.

While Linus Torvalds tends to be very strict about accepting kernel changes that have the potential of breaking user-space, he himself authored a patch today to change the mincore() system call to enhance the security.

It's been nearly seven years already since some kernel developers called for deprecating FBDEV drivers. FBDEV is still alive and well within the Linux kernel but at least more embedded/mobile developers are pursuing DRM/KMS drivers these days and less code targeting these frame-buffer device drivers. With Linux 4.21, FBDEV is picking up a few improvements.

The kernel work has been revived for supporting encryption and authentication of hibernation snapshot images for better security.

With 2019 started and also the 15th year since starting Phoronix.com, what am I most excited for in 2019 from a Linux/open-source perspective? Here is a look at what has me motivated for the year ahead.

As of this New Year's Eve afternoon, the Linux kernel saw 74,974 commits this year that added 3,385,121 lines of code and removed 2,512,040 lines.

It was a very busy year in kernel space from mitigating security vulnerabilities to preparing new features. Here is a look back at the most popular kernel topics of this year.

Con Kolivas has announced a New Year's Eve release of his Linux 4.20-ck1 kernel patch-set and the newest MuQSS scheduler.

Initially rolled out in November, the Linux 4.21 merge window is the first time that Linus Torvalds' new helper has been pushed to its limits for assisting both him and those sending in pull requests to the kernel.

Greg KH on Friday submitted the staging changes for the Linux kernel where many drivers and other code continues maturing before being elevated to the normal area of the kernel.

While there are existing ways of manipulating Linux console fonts/sizes from user-space, with the upcoming Linux 4.21 kernel there is a new in-tree console font.

Greg Kroah-Hartman began sending in his pull requests on Friday morning for the kernel code he maintains. With the char/misc changes does come the Binderfs file-system.

The crypto subsystem changes for the Linux 4.21 kernel were sent in this morning and they are quite exciting.

Linus Torvalds began honoring pull requests on Christmas for the in-development Linux 4.21 kernel. Among the initial pull requests were the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver updates that for this cycle most notably has the long-awaited FreeSync/Adaptive-Sync support.

Similar to the XFS changes for Linux 4.21, the EXT4 file-system is just seeing code clean-ups and fixes.

While already in use by Android's version of the Linux kernel, the ARM-developed Energy Aware Scheduling support is set to finally be mainlined for the Linux 4.21 kernel.

As expected, Linux 4.20 is now available as the latest stable version of the Linux kernel and just in time for Christmas.

David Miller is one of the latest kernel maintainers sending in his pull requests early for the upcoming Linux 4.21 kernel with its merge window expected to open during the holidays.

Another one of the pull requests sent in early for the Linux 4.21 kernel cycle due to the holidays are the ACPI and power management trees maintained by Intel's Rafael Wysocki.

Kernel changes continue flowing for addressing the "Year 2038" problem where on where on 19 January 2038 a signed 32-bit integer is no longer large enough for accommodating the number of seconds since 1970 as the 32-bit Unix time format.

While Linux 4.20 isn't even expected for release until Sunday, which itself is delivering many new features and hardware support, the Linux 4.21 release is another big one that will start off the new year.