Linux 5.5 kernel released with security updates and supports hardware platforms like Raspberry Pi 4, Chromebooks and Intel Processors.
Linux 5.5 brings many changes including Raspberry Pi 4 support, AMD Navi GPU overclocking, support for new and upcoming Intel platforms, enabling 5-level paging by default, an NVMe drive temperature driver that is convenient and better than the current user-space utilities, Chromebook Wake-On-Voice support, KUnit for in-kernel unit testing, and much more.
Update with some (mainly iwl wireless) network driver and netfilter module loading fixes, David didn’t think that warranted another -rc. And outside of that, it’s really been very quiet indeed – there’s a panfrost driver update too, but again it didn’t really seem to make sense to delay the final release by another week. So despite the slight worry that the holidays might have affected the schedule, 5.5 ended up with the regular rc cadence and is out now, Linus Trovald said.
“That means that the merge window for 5.6 will open tomorrow, and I already have a couple of pull requests pending. The timing for this next merge window isn’t optimal for me – I have some travel and other things going on during the same two weeks, but hopefully it won’t be all that noticeable. But there might be random timezones, odd hours, and random delays because of that. I try to avoid scheduling things during the merge window, but hey, it doesn’t always work out, and I’d have to delay things by two weeks to avoid the conflicts, which just doesn’t seem worth it.
Particularly since it’s not necessarily going to be a problem to begin with. We’ll see.”
Alsso updated GNU Linux-libre 5.5-gnu
Be Free! with GNU Linux-libre.
GNU Linux-libre 5.5-gnu sources and tarballs are now available . It didn’t require any deblobbing changes since -rc5-gnu, though the first published snapshot was only -rc6-gnu, and there was a regexp fix in -rc7-gnu to silence warnings and even errors in regexp compilers in gawk and Python 3.8. Binaries are expected to show up in the near future.
This release had more new drivers needing cleanup than we’ve seen in a while: Realtek RTL815[23] USB ethernet adaptors, WFX wf200 wireless, IDT Clockmatrix and RT5677 sound codecs. Other drivers that needed
deblobbing changes were wilc1000, brcmstb_dpfe, r8169, iwlwifi, x86 touchscreen dmi, xhci-tegra, i915, and mlxsw spectrum.
What is GNU Linux-libre?
GNU Linux-libre is a Free version of the kernel Linux (see below), suitable for use with the GNU Operating System in 100% Free.
GNU/Linux-libre System Distributions.
It removes non-Free components from Linux, that are disguised as source code or distributed in separate files. It also disables run-time requests for non-Free components, shipped separately or as part of Linux, and documentation pointing to them, so as to avoid (Free-)baiting users into the trap of non-Free Software.
