The AchieVer Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 Linux kernel 5.0 RC1 released After a long wait, we will finally be able to run the long-anticipated Linux 5.0 kernel on our Linux-powered computers as Linus Torvalds kicked off 2019 with the development cycle of Linux kernel 5.0. While not a special release, like many of you out there would have expected from such major milestone, Linux kernel 5.0 is coming in a few months to the stable repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution with updated and new drivers, architecture and tooling updates, as well as various improvements to networking, filesystems, documentation, and core kernel code. "The numbering change is not indicative of anything special. If you want to have an official reason, it's that I ran out of fingers and toes to count on, so 4.21 became 5.0. There's no nice git object numerology this time (we're _about_ 6.5M objects in the git repo), and there isn't any major particular feature that made for the release numbering either," said Linus Torvalds. The first release candidate is now ready for public testing if you want to be the first to run the upcoming Linux 5.0 kernel on your Linux box. While "nothing particular stands out," as Linus Torvalds reports on the kernel mailing list, it consists of about 50 percent updated and new drivers, with some ancient ones deprecated, 20 percent architecture updates, 10 percent tooling fixes, and the rest miscellaneous changes. Linux kernel 5.0 lunches February-March 2019 With the first release candidate out the door, we can guess when the final Linux 5.0 kernel will be hitting the streets, which should happen sometime at the end of February or early March 2019. As usual, the launch of the final release depends on how many RC (Release Candidate) milestone are needed, so we're looking at February 24th if there's seven RCs or March 3rd if there are eight RCs. Of course, after the final release, it would be a two-week window until Linux kernel 5.0 gets its first point release and it's marked as stable and ready for mass deployments, so mid-March 2019 is more likely when your Linux box will run Linux 5.0. Until then, you're invited to test drive the pre-release version by downloading Linux kernel 5.0 RC1 right now from kernel.org or via our web portal of free software. Happy testing! source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted January 10, 2019 Share Posted January 10, 2019 Linux 5.0 lands with added Nvidia Turing RTX, AMD FreeSync support It has some features and some stuff that's the same LINUX HAS been updated to a brand new version number, something that creates more excitement in users than in Linus Torvald's mind. Linux 5.0 has hit rc1, meaning that within weeks (roughly seven or eight), it will be the stable kernel for the various operating systems that depend on it. Despite the renumbering being as arbitrary as ever (he's been thinking of changing this for the last four versions) there are actually a whole bunch of new features to talk about. AMD FreeSync and Raspberry Pi touchscreen support have been added, there's early support for the Nvidia RTX Turing GPUs, and Logitech's high-resolution scrolling from its high-end mice. There's support for a crop of new ARM processors too, with NXP PowerPC processors finally getting their Spectre V2 patches. Several file systems get tweaks - most notably, F2FS, the File System in use on Google Pixel devices and there are tweaks for EXT4 too. Speaking of Spectre V2, developers have been hard at Retpoline overhead reduction work, to try and find a way of speeding the kernel up, after losing some performance in repairing the aforementioned vulnerability. DMA mapping updates have been implemented to take care of this though. No Wireguard this month, though. Lest we forget that we're now 19 years away from what could be one of the biggest issues since the millennium bug wasn't. The Y2038 bug has been known about for some time but as we get closer, there are renewed efforts to mitigate it once and for all. Also noticeable is a new font that does better justice to your fancy monitor - specifically HiDPI and retina models. And for security, there's support for two new encryption algorithms - Adiantum and Streebog. Although it'll be quite a while before we see the 5.0 kernel being incorporated into your Linux daily-drivers, the move represents absolutely nothing because Linus can and will always tell you that they're all just numbers really in the first place. Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jogs Posted January 10, 2019 Share Posted January 10, 2019 Hope he adds a new feature, running Windows apps natively. 😅 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.