Linux 4.15 should have arrived but it has not made an appearance as expected due to an extra workload. So here we have Linux 4.15 RC9. The reason is that some errors that we have had in recent days have generated a greater workload for developers and therefore this ninth candidate for the final version of the kernel has been released. Linus Torvalds has indicated that today was the day he wanted to release Linux 4.15 but Davem has fixes to add to the network drivers, while Laura Abbott found solutions for the boot problems ...
The creator did not like the delay or launching this ninth CR, but as he himself said he would have liked even less to launch something that is not entirely polished. It has been 7 years since another version of the kernel needed at least 9 RCs to become the end, therefore we are facing one of the most "lazy" final versions. That said, now we are going to start focusing on what the next version will bring us: Linux 4.16 in which great improvements and novelties are expected. What is known at the moment of Linux kernel 4.16 is that some improvements and progressions have been put on the table work and that must be implemented by the developers, although this is only an advance, since it will work to contribute much more than this:
- More optimizations for patches to mitigate Meltdown and Specter which are by no means a decent thing. The anger that Linus Torvalds had with them and that has been given again with harsh accusations to Intel has made it even more obvious ... Therefore, patches will come to mitigate variant one and optimizations for what already exists (KPTI / Retpoline) in addition to ARP64 KPTI support.
- Lots of improvements for the DRM driver AMDGPU and improvements also for Intel Cannonlake and other chips.
- Soundwire it will eventually hit Linux 4.16 as a new subsystem.
- Contributions to VirtualBox Guest Driver
- Encrypted and Secure Virtualization for AMD with KVM for Ryzen Pro and EPYC users.
- Jailhouse support the Siemens hypervisor.
- Support for GMP.
- Support for Skylake X P-State from Intel.
- New sound drivers, especially for ALlwinner SoCs.
- Updates for HID.
- Support LightNVM 2.0.
- Improvements for RAID about file systems Btrfs.
- Aggregate of ARMv8.4.
- More optimizations for BFQ with performance improvements.
- And much more…