Versie 3.17 van de Linux Kernel is vrijgegeven. De kernel is het hart van het besturingssysteem en zit, simpel gezegd, als laag tussen de hardware en de applicaties in. Nieuw in versie 3.17 is onder meer ondersteuning voor de AMD Radeon R9 290, Xbox One-controller en de free-fall in Toshiba-laptops. Verder zien we diverse verbeteringen met betrekking tot ARM-hardware en de Braswell en Cherry Trail van Intel. Meer informatie over de verbeteringen in deze release is te vinden bij Kernel newbies en Phoronix.
Prominent features in Linux 3.17Prominent features in Linux 3.16
- Microsoft Xbox One controller support (without vibration)
- Additional improvements to Sony SIXAXIS support
- Toshiba “Active Protection Sensor” support
- New ARM support includes Rockchip RK3288 and AllWinner A23 SoCs
- “Cross-thread filter setting” for secure computing facility
- Broadcom BCM7XXX-based board support (used in various set-top boxes)
- Enhanced AMD Radeon R9 290 support
- Misc. Nouveau driver improvements, including Kepler GPU fixes
- Audio support includes Wildcatpoint Audio DSP on Intel Broadwell Ultrabooks.
- Nvidia graphics performance improvements, initial support for GK20A devices and GK110B
- Intel graphic driver allows mapping of user pages into video memory
- Unified Control Group hierarchy
- XFS free inode btree, for faster inode allocation
- Allow booting ARM 64 kernels as EFI stubs
- TCP Fast Open server mode on IPv6 support
- Intel Cherryview graphics support
- Radeon performance improvements through improved APU power management have been enabled in some APUs