Linus Torvalds has now announced the release of Linux 6.19 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML):
There were no unexpected events last week, so 6.19 is now available as anticipated, just in time for people in the US to pause everything for the latest round of TV commercials. One might guess they are all AI-generated, unless a company decides to do something different. Though, it’s unlikely.
For those outside the US, testing out the newest kernel version might be a good alternative.
I’ve received more than thirty-six pull requests for the next merge window opening tomorrow – much appreciation to all the diligent maintainers. As many have deduced, large numbers can be confusing (I’m nearly out of counting aids like fingers and toes), so the following kernel will be named 7.0.
Today’s significant updates are 6.19 release and some sports event.
Linus
Linux 6.18, released a little over two months ago, removed the debatable bcachefs filesystem, enhanced UDP networking and swap performance, and added further Rust support. It was also classified as the latest LTS (Long Term Support) version, with updates scheduled until at least December 2027. Let us now shift our attention to Linux 6.19 which includes several noteworthy changes and specifics regarding the Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures.
Notable Changes in Linux 6.19
The significant updates are as follows:
- PCIe Link Encryption and Secure Device Authentication – Provides encrypted and authenticated PCIe traffic between virtual machines and devices, ensuring host OS or other devices cannot tamper with DMA traffic.
- File System Improvements
- Btrfs File System – Allows system suspension while scrub and device replacement are ongoing; shutdown ioctl support added; improves block sizes in RAID56 beyond memory page size; includes preparations for fscrypt support and locking performance enhancements when handling space reservation tickets.
- EXT-4 File System – Supports block sizes beyond the page size (4KB on x86), offering approximately 50% better buffered IO write performance on average, albeit with some direct IO degradation due to checksum delays. See commit with benchmarks for more details.
- Color Pipeline API for HDR Support – This API is designed to handle complex color transformations in display controller hardware for HDR applications, offering applications like video or image editors the ability to use built-in hardware functionality for color transformations with minimal CPU or shader impact. Check the kernel documentation for more information.
Linux 6.19 Arm Architecture Changelog
As always, numerous changes were made to the Arm architecture, focusing on