Briefing: Linux Kernel 4.5 brings improved support for Kaby Lake, ARM v6 and v7, and Nvidia GPU boosts

'Blurry Fish Butt' finally sees the light of day

The latest release of the Linux Kernel, version 4.5, has finally seen the light of day, with numerous tweaks intended to improve support for Linux across a range of architectures.

Linux Kernel 4.5 should contain few surprises for anyone familiar with the release candidate that came out at the end of January; the big news is undoubtedly the improved support for Intel Kaby Lake, ARM v6 and v7 microprocessors, and Nvidia GPU boosts

"On the whole, everything here is pretty small," admitted Linux creator and Kernel maintainer Linus Torvalds. "The diffstat looks a bit larger for an xfs fix, because that fix has three cleanup refactoring patches that precedes it. And there's a access type pattern fix in the sound layer that generated lots of noise, but is all very simple in the end."

So let's go through the update in detail.

There has been significant improvements made to AMD GPU support. However, please note that during day-to-day activity, Powerplay is not available by default and must be triggered manually.

Also, you will note from the dossier that Forward Error Correction has been added to the system, thereby adding the opportunity for Linux to compensate for when a file system is slightly damaged. Multi-platform in ARMv6 and ARMv7 is now ready after five years of work.

In graphics, a DRM driver for the 3D core used in ARM boards has been given its initial try out. GCC UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer is now supported, offering proper memory accounting for sockets.

As previously divulged on Computing's sister site, the INQUIRER, there is now support for the forthcoming range of Kaby Lake chips from Intel and there's improved response times for PS/2 mice.

Full details will be in Colonel Newbie's run down of all the changes and updates in the latest Linux kernel.

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