The open-source community and mastermind behind Linux, Linus Torvalds, have been hard at work developing the next big Linux release. The latest Linux Kernel 6.1 release marks the start of the 6.0 series of Linux Kernels, and it’s already setting something big for the upcoming Linux releases.
For starters, the Linux Kernel 6.1 release adds support for kernel development in Rust which, based on the increasing popularity of the Rust programming language, is a big deal. What’s not a big deal is the release only adds support for Rust for the developers to play around with it in the Kernel, and there are no traces of Rust code in the kernel.
The changes and additions in Linux Kernel 6.1 include the following:
- Reworked LLVM-based control-flow integrity.
- Initial support for Rust.
- Support for destructive BPF programs
- Better user-space control over transparent large-page creation.
- Improved memory-tiering support.
- Multi-generational LRU.
- Maple tree data structure.
- Kernel memory sanitizer.
Linus’ email to the maintainers reads:
So here we are, a week late, but last week was nice and slow, and I’m much happier about the state of 6.1 than I was a couple of weeks ago when things didn’t seem to be slowing down.
Of course, that means that now we have the merge window from hell, just before the holidays, with me having some pre-holiday travel coming up too. So while delaying things for a week was the right thing to do, it does make the timing for the 6.2 merging window awkward.
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What are your thoughts about the latest Linux kernel release, and what would you like to see in the upcoming release? Let us know in the comments section below.