Linux 6.8 kernel has been released
Sanjay Kumar Sharma
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As you’d expect, Linux kernel 6.8 includes plenty of prep, bring-up, and early enablement for hardware and hardware-enabled features most of us aren’t?currently?using.
This includes the experimental Intel Xe DRM driver Linus mentions in his release announcement, plus further support for AMD Zen 5 and other upcoming AMD hardware, initial code for Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (and related SoCs), and similar.
But for me, the truly exciting Linux kernel changes are the ones I can feel, benefit from, or make use of myself right now.
And thankfully Linux 6.8 comes with a bunch of them!
Linux 6.8 adds Raspberry Pi 5 support to the V3D DRM driver,?including GPUTop and FDINFO support. This means any distro offering Mesa 23.3 and Linux 6.8 will provide a solid graphics experience out-of-the-box on the Pi 5, no kernel patches required.
This change will help ensure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS runs?sweet as pie?on the?Raspberry Pi 5.
In this kernel version, the?zswap?subsystem is able to force cold pages out to real swap when memory pressure gets too much (with opt-out for those who don’t wish to use this). There’s also a?new zswap mode to disable writing back to swap entirely.
Linux kernel 6.8 is able to prevent direct writes to block devices with mounted filesystems (excepting Btrfs for the moment ). Devs say writing to mounted devices can lead to filesystem corruption and crashes. Although this is disabled by default Linux distros are likely to enable it.
An adjustment to the Intel P-State CPU frequency scaling driver will mean devices powered by Intel ‘Meteor Lake’ CPUs (released at the end of last year) hit their advertised ‘boost’ speeds under Linux, as under the previous kernel?they were found?to be running ~100MHz under.
Thus, if you use Linux on a?Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 12),?Acer Swift Go 14,?ASUS Expertbook B5, or another laptop powered by Intel Core Ultra mobile?processors you can?expect a pinch?more performance during peak loads when running the newest Linux kernel.
On the subject of portables, AMD Ryzen 7000 (and upcoming Ryzen 8000) laptops were suffering from radio frequency interference (RFI) from the Wi-Fi and GPU memory clocks. Linux 6.8 includes?AMD RFI mitigations?(WBRF) to resolve this.
Network-related: Linux 6.8 includes networking buffs that provide better cache efficiency. This is?said to?improve?“TCP performances with many concurrent connections up to 40%”?– a sizeable uplift!
Linux gamers will be pleased to hear that Linux 6.8 now supports:
And also includes driver fixes for the official Steam Controller.
In addition to the above, here are some other choice highlights in Linux 6.8:
Finally, while few (if any) of us run Linux on RISC-V boards there’s no denying that the open-source processor architecture has a bright future.
Linux kernel 6.8 adds support for AMD’s MicroBlaze V soft-core RISC-V CPU, XIP kernel features,?riscv_hwprobe()?system calls, can now?suspend to RAM on RISC-V?when the SUSP SBI extension is present, and ships a new camera subsystem driver for the?StarFive SoC.
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For more details on all of the above I (as ever) recommend sifting through the 2-part LWN merge roundups (part 1?&?part 2) which offer a waffle-free overview plus links and info.
Getting Linux kernel 6.8
As for getting Linux 6.8? You can download the source code right now and compile the kernel by hand but you’re best off waiting for your Linux distribution to package this kernel release properly and push it out as a software update.
Next month you can install or upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS which includes Linux 6.8 by default (and this will be back ported to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS in the next HWE/ Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS).
Using Canonical’s mainline kernel builds is not encouraged?(not least because they’re not signed so can fail to boot in certain situations, don’t get security updates, etc).
That said, some folks do install Canonical mainline kernel builds in Ubuntu (though some only do so temporarily). If you really can’t wait to get your hands on Linux kernel 6.8 then those pre-packaged DEBs are an option — but you do use them at your own risk!
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