Linux 5.11-rc4 was just released and it's looking like a fairly normal release at this stage of development aside from some notable additions that were merged this week.

Linux 5.10.8 is out today as the latest stable release for the Linux 5.10 LTS series. Making this point release notable is that it finally addresses the 5.10 Btrfs performance regression.

While new feature code is normally not allowed in past the end of the merge window for a given Linux kernel release cycle, Linus Torvalds has decided to merge the newly-published open-source driver code for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 "Ampere" graphics cards for the Linux 5.11 kernel that will debut as stable in February.

The support for Clang LTO of the Linux kernel for link-time optimizations when using that GCC alternative compiler looks like it will land with Linux 5.12.

While Linux 5.11-rc2 was tiny due to the holidays, with developers and testers returning to work the Linux 5.11-rc3 release that was just issued is much bigger.

Several months back you may recall that Linux 5.9 kernel regression we noted that in turn was bisected to code introduced by Linus Torvalds around page lock fairness. That was ultimately worked out in time with allowing a control over the page lock (un)fairness to address the regressed workloads while being fair enough to satisfy his original change. But now this week for Linux 5.11, Linus Torvalds has again altered the behavior. It then ended up causing a PostgreSQL database server performance regression but fortunately any impact should be very minimal and hopefully not appearing in any real-world situation.

With Linux 5.10 having shipped as the latest Long Term Support (LTS) release to be maintained for at least the next five years, a discussion has begun over dropping a number of old and obsolete CPU platform support currently found within the mainline kernel. For many of the architectures being considered for removal they haven't seen any new commits in years but as is the case once proposals are made for them to be removed there are often passionate users wanting the support to be kept.

Linux 5.10.5 LTS is out today with at least one rather interesting addition.

Another one of the features you won't find in the Linux 5.11 kernel is support for the recently ratified NVMe Simple Copy but work on supporting that feature continues.

The second weekly release candidate of Linux 5.11 is now available for testing.

For as great as Linux 5.11 is with its new features, there is also some prominent material that has yet to be upstreamed into the mainline kernel -- some of which is likely to hit in 2021 while other changes have less likely ambitions for mainline.

The Linux kernel in 2020 saw lots of new features added and other functionality improved while continuing to generally keep pace with punctual new hardware support.

The Linux kernel with the likes of ARM and x86 hardware leverage kernel infrastructure for reporting their relevant CPU security mitigations while only now the MIPS kernel code is seeing work to report such vulnerabilities. However, on the MIPS front it's more difficult with some vendors not publicly acknowledging vulnerabilities and other cases of MIPS hardware vendors no longer producing the hardware in question or even in business.

Con Kolivas took some time out of his New Year's Eve to release Linux 5.10-ck1 as his independent patch-set applied to the recently minted Linux 5.10 kernel and with that the latest MuQSS scheduler.

Linus Torvalds as expected released Linux 5.11-rc1 this evening, which marks the end of the two week merge window that went through Christmas.

Linux 5.11-rc1 is due for release later today and at least one regression has seen a quick resolution.

Linux 5.10.3 is out today as a post-Christmas stable release update.

The previously covered VirtIO memory (VirtIO-MEM) work on its Big Block Mode "BBM" will be landing with Linux 5.11.

Merged into the Linux kernel back in 2015 was the TraceFS file-system to better address Linux tracing use-cases that previously were handled atop DebugFS. Now LibTraceFS has reached version 1.0 as the user-space library around TraceFS after being spun out of Trace-CMD earlier this year.

For at least a second time, a patch sent out under "request for comments" would strip out the existing BZIP2 code within the Linux kernel.

While the Linux 5.11 merge window is only half-way through with prominent pull requests like the DRM / graphics driver updates already have been merged some of the testing has already begun at Phoronix of this new kernel. With the Radeon RX 6800 XT "RDNA 2" graphics continuing to mature, we are seeing slight uplift in some benchmarks when moving from Linux 5.10 stable to Linux 5.11 Git.

The ACPI / power management and thermal pull requests were all sent out and merged this week for the ongoing Linux 5.11 development.

The cryptography subsystem within the Linux kernel is constantly seeing new hardware drivers and other improvements with the current Linux 5.11 cycle being no different.

While a "core/entry" pull request may not seem that exciting, this time around for the Linux 5.11 kernel there are two prominent additions.

The Linux kernel this year has seen new safeguards and efforts aiming to have user-space reduce their arbitrary poking of CPU machine specific registers (MSRs) in the name of security and other handling concerns. That effort has continued on with the Linux 5.11 cycle.

It was just yesterday evening -- less than 24 hours ago -- that Linux 5.10 LTS was released but already the first point release has arrived due to bugs in the storage code.

Earlier this year work began on preparing SD Express card/host support for Linux and now with the Linux 5.11 kernel that will debut in early 2021 is this preliminary support.

Following yesterday's release of the Linux 5.10 LTS kernel the GNU folks have released their "GNU Linux-libre 5.10-gnu" downstream that is the Linux kernel but without support for loading proprietary modules as well as preventing closed-source firmware binaries from being loaded on the system and related steps in the name of free software.

As expected, Linus Torvalds today officially released Linux 5.10. Besides being the last kernel release of 2020, this is a significant milestone in that it's also a Long Term Support (LTS) kernel to be maintained for at least the next five years and also is a huge kernel update in general with many new features.

While there are a lot of driver improvements throughout, as usual those on Intel HD/UHD/Iris/Xe Graphics and AMD Radeon graphics with their first-rate open-source graphics drivers have a lot of grand improvements to find with the forthcoming Linux 5.11 cycle.