Linux 5.5 comes with improvements for LivePatch and these other news

After a couple of weeks wondering if he would arrive sooner or later, Linus Torvalds He launched yesterday Linux 5.5. It is the latest stable version of the Linux kernel and comes with many new features, most of them in the form of improved support for all types of hardware. Torvalds had originally considered releasing an eighth Release Candidate, but decided it was not necessary after a very quiet week and a very small kernel size.

Linux 5.5 is a major release, or at least more important than versions like v5.4 whose most notable change was a very controversial security module called Lockdown. Many say that Lockdown "takes the grace out of Linux", while others believe that it will improve the security of operating systems and would like their distribution to activate it by default. Below you have the list of most outstanding novelties that come with Linux 5.5.

Linux 5.5 Highlights

• The Linux 5.5 LivePatch will follow the state of the system to better manage patches. We remember that Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa will have this option available because it is an LTS version.
• A System76 ACPI driver will be added for your new Coreboot.
• New Intel HMEM driver to handle hardware like Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory.
• Main support for older SGI Octane MIPS workstations.
• Continuous enablement of Tiger Lake / Gen12 graphics, as well as support for Jasper Lake graphics. There is also support for 12 BPC colors, HDCP updates and other changes for the Intel driver.
• Along with the other Intel Gen12 graphics work, there are some initial snippets on Intel Xe Multi-GPU setups.
• Support for AMD OverDrive overclocking for Navi GPUs.
  
• Support for HDCP AMDGPU for its content protection capability.
• More Arcturus GPU code has been added for that unreleased Radeon Pro product. Also AMDGPU fixes power management, Navi and other Radeon graphics bits.
• Support for the Adreno 510 included in the MSM DRM driver.
• Improved power savings on hybrid notebooks with Intel Graphics and a discrete NVIDIA GPU.
• Updates for the Intel Speed ​​Select Tool.
• NVMe drive temperatures will be reported via HWMON / sysfs.
• Better handling of EXT4 encryption because FSCRYPT-based encryption now works when the block size is smaller than the system page size. A new direct I / O read implementation also comes with EXT4.
• FSCRYPT online encryption support.
• Thunderbolt 3 software connection manager support to benefit Apple systems.
• The Linux 5.5 crypto subsystem finally replaces the asynchronous block cipher API with the use of SKCIPHER.
• Support for NVIDIA DP MST audio.
• Intel Ice Lake power management improvements.
• The VirtualBox file sharing driver has been reintroduced, something that was removed in Linux 5.4.
• Improvements for Huawei laptops.
• For Zen 2 CPUs, the new RDPRU instruction will be advertised in / proc / cpuinfo.
• A new WiFi WFX controller for Silicon Labs low power IoT hardware.
• A new Logitech keyboard controller.

Now available at kernel.org

Linux 5.5 It is now available in The Linux Kernel Archives (kernel.org) and we can download its tarball from this link. We can also install the new version using user interface tools like Greatness.