Linux Kernel 6.12 was released! Linus Torvalds announced on Sunday:
“No strange surprises this last week, so we’re sticking to the regular release schedule, and that obviously means that the merge window opens
tomorrow. I already have two dozen+ pull requests in my mailbox, kudos to all the early birds.
But before the merge window opens, please give this a quick test to make sure we didn’t mess anything up. The shortlog below gives you the summary for the last week, and nothing really jumps out at me. A number of last-minute reverts, and some random fairly small fixes fairly spread out in the tree.”
Linux Kernel 6.11 was released! Linus Torvalds announced it 2 days ago on Sunday:
“I’m once again on the road and not in my normal timezone, but it’s Sunday afternoon here in Vienna, and 6.11 is out.
The last week was actually pretty quiet and calm, which is nice to see. The shortlog is below for anybody who wants to look at the details, but it really isn’t very many patches, and the patches are all pretty small. Nothing in particular stands out – the biggest patch in here is for Hyper-V Confidential Computing documentation. …”
For Ubuntu 24.04 and its based systems, the Mainline Kernel PPA finally fixed building recent Kernel packages since v6.10.3.
The Mainline Kernel PPA is Ubuntu maintained package archive that keeps building the upstream Linux Kernel releases for testing purpose.
The recent builds since v6.10-rc3 were broken due to unknown reason. If you’re waiting for the fix for it, the latest build for Kernel 6.10.3 is backing for working again.
Linux Kernel 6.10 was finally released a day ago on this Sunday. Linus Torvalds announced on this page:
“So the final week was perhaps not quote as quiet as the preceding ones, which I don’t love – but it also wasn’t noisy enough to warrant an extra rc. And much of the noise this last week was bcachefs again (with netfs a close second), so it was all pretty compartmentalized.
In fact, about a third of the patch for the last week was filesystem-related (there were also some btrfs latency fixes and other noise), which is unusual, but none of it looks particularly scary.”
Linus Torvalds announced Linux 6.8 stable as the latest Kernel series this Sunday.
For Intel, the new kernel now includes the IAA (Intel Analytics Accelerators) crypto compression kernel driver, Qualcomm WCD939X USB subsystem Altmode Mux driver. It added support for QAT 420xx devices, and Thunderbold support for next 16th gen CPUs, QAT 420xx devices. The intel_idle driver now supports ntel Meteor Lake 14th Gen CPUs. And, the issue that the maximum frequency of Core Ultra mobile processors is 100MHz less has been fixed.
AMD PMC (Power Management Controller) driver has been updated with next-gen Zen 5 CPUs support. And, the kernel now supports AMD MicroBlaze V soft-core RISC-V processor.
Kernel 6.8 also added many new devices support. They include Samsung Exynos Auto v920, Google GS101 (Tensor G1), MediaTek MT8188, Qualcomm SM8650 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3), Qualcomm X1E80100 (Snapdragon X Elite), and Unisoc UMS9620 (Tanggula 7), as well as new Lenovo, ASUS, and Acer Chromebooks with Mediatek MT8183 SoC.
For gaming, the kernel adds driver for Adafruit Seesaw gamepad, and supports Lenovo Legion Go and Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) controllers, as well as new gaming handhelds, such as Anbernic RG351V, Powkiddy RK2023, and Powkiddy X55.
Other changes in Linux Kernel 6.8 include:
Initial Rust support for LoongArch CPU.
11% higher s390 (IBM Z) system call entry performance
Linux Kernel 6.7 is finally released! Linus Torvalds announced the release on Sunday night:
So we had a little bit more going on last week compared to the holiday week before that, but certainly not enough to make me think we’d want
to delay this any further.
End result: 6.7 is (in number of commits: over 17k non-merge commits, with 1k+ merges) one of the largest kernel releases we’ve ever had, but the extra rc8 week was purely due to timing with the holidays, not about any difficulties with the larger release.
The new Kernel release has many new and improved hardware support!
For Intel, the Turbostat command utility now supports Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake (15th gen) processors; LPSS (Low-Power Sub-System) driver now support Lunar Lake M processors; The Meteor Lake (14th gen mobile processors) graphics support now considered stable.
All the newest AMD Radeon RDNA2 and RDNA3 GPUs with Display Core Next 3.0 has Seamless Boot enabled.
And, NVIDIA has GSP support in the open-source Nouveau driver for initial GeForce RTX 40 acceleration support and improved RTX 20/30 series hardware support.
There are so many tutorials teaching how to install the latest Kernel, while, this one is going to show you how to downgrade to the original GA (General Availability) Kernel 5.15 in Ubuntu 22.04.
The GA Kernel is shipped by default in the first stable release of Ubuntu 22.04. By rolling out Ubuntu 22.04.1, 22.04.2, and 22.04.3, it now has Kernel 6.2 as default (next should be 6.5 in 22.04.4).
Don’t know why, but someone asked how to revert back the original Kernel 5.15. So, here’s the quick tips show you how.
Install GA Kernel in Ubuntu:
All current Ubuntu releases, including the next Ubuntu 24.04 Noble, include linux-image-generic package in system repositories for the Generic Linux kernel.
Simply press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then, run command to install it:
sudo apt install linux-image-generic
Run sudo apt update if the command above does not work.
Boot Your Ubuntu with Kernel 5.15
After installing the kernel package, you have to either set it as default in boot-menu or remove the HWE 6.2 Kernel.
Firstly, boot/reboot your machine, press Esc while booting to show the Grub menu. Then, select boot the Kernel 5.15 from “Advanced options for Ubuntu” -> “Ubuntu, with Linux 5.15.0-xx-generic”.
After booted into Ubuntu and logged in, verify by running command in terminal window (Ctrl+Alt+T):
uname -a
To make it default, either remove the HWE kernel by running command:
For those who want to install the most recent Kernel 6.6 with new hardware support or compatibility fixes, it’s now available in the zabbly repository for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and Debian 12.
Linux 6.6 was released few weeks ago as the latest Kernel series. It features PSR power saving for Intel 4th/5th CPU, initial PECI support for 4th Gen Xeon, initial support for the Intel Lunar Lake VPU4, Dynamic Boost Control support for AMD Ryzen laptops, as well as various new hardware support. See HERE for more.
As Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA is stuck at old RC5 for unknown reason, there’s NO official package for the new Kernel release.
For choice, the Zabbly repository maintained by Ubuntu core developer (quit a few months ago) has updated the new kernel package for Ubuntu 22.04 & 20.04.
Add Zabbly Repository & install latest Kernel
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then, run the commands below one by one to add the repository and install latest Kernel:
Download & install the key:
sudo wget -O - https://pkgs.zabbly.com/key.asc |sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/zabbly.asc
Setup the repository via single command:
sh -c 'cat <<EOF > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zabbly-kernel-stable.sources
Enabled: yes
Types: deb
URIs: https://pkgs.zabbly.com/kernel/stable
Suites: $(. /etc/os-release && echo ${VERSION_CODENAME})
Components: main
Architectures: $(dpkg --print-architecture)
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/zabbly.asc
EOF'
This is a single command for Ubuntu/Debian. For their based systems, you have to replace $(. /etc/os-release && echo ${VERSION_CODENAME}) with jammy (for 22.04 base), focal (for 20.04 base), or bookworm for Debian 12 base.
Finally, update & install the new kernel:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install linux-zabbly
In case the previous steps are not clear enough, or it broke things up, see this step by step detailed guide instead.
Linux Torvalds announced the release of Kernel 6.6 this Monday.
It’s the latest mainline kernel so far, that features EEVDF scheduler, and per-policy CPUFreq performance boost control.
For Intel, the new kernel added Intel Shadow Stack support to prevent ROP attacks; Initial PECI support for 4th Gen Xeon Scalable “Sapphire Rapids” platforms; And, initial support for the Intel Lunar Lake VPU4.
For old laptops with Intel 4th/5th CPU, the kernel enabled Panel Self Refresh (PSR) support for power-savings.
For AMD, the kernel has Dynamic Boost Control support, Zen 5 temperature and EDAC support for AMD 1Ah processors, and FreeSync Panel Replay support with better power saving for upcoming AMD Ryzen laptops.
The cpupower utility has been updated. Now it supports for adjusting new AMD P-State driver features, include changing the AMD P-State mode, and turbo-boost mode.
For Linux system installed on EXT4 file partition, Kernel 6.6 will have 34% improvement with many concurrent writes and Apache Kafka 10% performance boost.
Linux 6.6 has many new hardware support, they include:
GameSir T4 Kaleid Controller.
SteelSeries Arctis 1 Xbox headset
New Ethernet hardware supported, including the Broadcom ASP 2.0 72165 controller, MediaTek MT7988 SoC, TI AM654 SoC, TI IEP, Atheros QCA8081 PHY. Marvell 88Q2110 PHY, and the NXP TJA1120 PHY.
MediaTek MT7981 wireless chipset
Bluetooth support for Intel Gale Peak, Qualcomm WCN3988 and WCN7850, NXP AW693 and IW624, and the MediaTek MT2925.
Other changes include:
Better protect against the illicit behavior of NVIDIA’s proprietary kernel driver.
New driver for Azoteq IQS7210A/7211A/E touch controller
Force feedback (rumble) support for the Google Stadia controller.
New sysctl interface for disabling IO_uring system-wide
Supports AP mode on the RTL8192FU, RTL8710BU (RTL8188GU), RTL8192EU, and RTL8723BU.
USB MIDI 2.0 gadget function driver
Toggle charge mode, middle fan control for ASUS WMI supported devices.
dGPU and CPU tunables for ROG laptops
How to Install Linux Kernel 6.6
The Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA somehow stuck at v6.6 RC5. So, there’s no proper way to get the Linux Kernel 6.6 at the moment of writing besides building from the source code.
Though, you can keep an eye on the third-party trustworthy Zabbly repository, which should update for the 6.6 Kernel in next few days.
Want to install the latest Linux Kernel 6.5? It’s there in your Ubuntu 22.04 system repository!
Linux Kernel 6.5 was released a week ago with exciting new features, including initial USB4 v2, MIDI 2.0 support, much faster parallel direct I/O overwrite on EXT4, Acer Aspire 1 Arm laptop, Sony Xperia M4 Aqua phone, open-source driver support for Lenovo ThinkPad X13s laptop, enhanced load balancing for Intel hybrid CPUs, Intel SoundWire ACE2.x support, and more.
Ubuntu built the Kernel package in the Mainline PPA, which sadly only installs in Ubuntu 23.10 so far due to dependency issue.
Now, for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Linux 6.5 has been made into the main repository as OEM Kernel!
What is OEM Kernel
Ubuntu LTS has a few different Kernel series. They include GA Kernel that is default in first stable release, HWE Kernel (6.2 at the moment) backported from newer Ubuntu short-term releases and default in point release (e.g., Ubuntu 22.04.1, 22.04.2).
The OEM Kernel is an Ubuntu derivative kernel, specifically for use in OEM projects.
It is a staging Kernel series with shorter life cycle. It will get rolled off to the next HWE kernel once all the fixes have been forward-ported. Meaning, Linux 6.5 will probably be the default in next Ubuntu 22.04.4.
The OEM Kernel is made and officially supported by Ubuntu Team. It’s SAFE to run in any machine according to the Wiki page.
How to Install OEM Kernel 6.5 in Ubuntu 22.04
To install the Kernel package, simply press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window.
When terminal opens, run command to refresh package cache:
sudo apt update
Finally, install the kernel package via:
sudo apt install linux-oem-22.04d
When done. Restart your computer, and verify by running command in a terminal window:
uname -a
Uninstall OEM Kernel 6.5
To restore the old Kernel, first start/restart your machine and choose the previous Kernel (under “Advanced”) in boot menu.
In case you removed the old Kernels, install it back by running command:
