Linus Torvalds releases Linux 5.11, says it's so good your significant other wants you to test it on Valentine's Day

[Lightwreather]

Summary

Linus Torvalds has delivered version 5.11 of the Linux kernel to the faithful.

"Nothing unexpected or particularly scary happened this week, so here we are - with 5.11 tagged and pushed out, Torvalds said in his weekly state of the kernel post.

 

Quotes

Quote

Linus Torvalds has delivered version 5.11 of the Linux kernel to the faithful.

"Nothing unexpected or particularly scary happened this week, so here we are - with 5.11 tagged and pushed out, Torvalds said in his weekly state of the kernel post.

Big inclusions in this release include support for Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) technology that allows developers to use walled-off enclaves of memory in which it’s theoretically possible to get some work done without the rest of a system having any idea what’s going on inside. It’s a nice idea but SGX has been compromised on several occasions .

AMD admirers get support for more silicon plus finer controls for power management and handling workloads as CPUs throttle up and down. The new kernel also improves Linux performance of some AMD CPUs.

The new release also means the kernel can now run on the crowdfunded OUYA Android-powered games console, probably because Linux was offered as a way to keep the machine and its games alive after the product flopped. Also in the “They bothered with that?” column is support for Guitar Hero and Wii U controllers.

The Xen hypervisor gains fixes for two bugs, one of which could result in privilege escalation and even a little light information leakage. XFS has become more sensitive to damaged filesystems and won’t mount them until they’ve been repaired.

WiMax support has been demoted to staging, joining Itanium in the orphan shack.

"I know it's Valentine's Day here in the US - maybe give this release a good testing before you go back and play with development kernels," Torvalds said in hits post, adding: "Because I'm sure your SO [significant other] will understand."

With 5.11 out of the way, the caravan rolls on the version 5.12. As usual we can expect a two-week merge window and then seven or eight release candidates. Which would see 5.12 land in late April, assuming the Easter holiday doesn’t kick a hole in the schedule.

 

Info from second source (ie. stuff added):

Quote

Wi-Fi 6E Support Added

RISC-V Improvements

Intel Iris Xe GPU Support Added

Intel Itanium Support Dropped

Intel SGX Support Added

Intel Platform Monitoring Technology Support Added

AMD Zen 2/Zen3 CPU Performance Enhanced

AMD Van Gogh APU Support Added

Nvidia RTX 30 “Ampere” GPU Support Added

File-System Needs Repair Flagging By XFS

Modtronix LCD2S Support Added

Dynamic Thermal Power Management (DTPM) Framework Added

My thoughts

New kernel, new stuff to test out. That being said, Torvalds was probably a little too late to ask people to test it out on valentine's day in some countries (mine included). But anyway, this new kernel is kinda significant but not too significant either. Other than that, the Linux 5.11 kernel promises lots of updated and new drivers, and the usual improvements and fixes for filesystems, networking, architectures, tooling, and last but not least documentation (which is pretty important).

Sources

https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/14/linux_kernel_5_11_released/

https://news.itsfoss.com/linux-kernel-5-11-release/

[PlayStation 2]

I don't necessarily think my boyfriend would care if I tested a Linux kernel the day after Valentine's Day.

[handymanshandle]

1 hour ago, PlayStation 2 said:

I don't necessarily think my boyfriend would care if I tested a Linux kernel the day after Valentine's Day.

indeed I would not lmao
:^)

[Master Disaster]

I might have a go at getting this running on my Arch install. Not because I need to, I'm running 5,8 ATM and everything is great but I think its about time I learned how to pull a kernel from source, compile it and install it.

[Lightwreather]

Note: Added another source and extra info in a seperate quote

[RejZoR]

We all know everyone who try new Linux kernel on Valentine's, don't have their significant other... (having one locked in the basement doesn't count)

[igormp]

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I might have a go at getting this running on my Arch install. Not because I need to, I'm running 5,8 ATM and everything is great but I think its about time I learned how to pull a kernel from source, compile it and install it.

It's pretty easy and quick: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel/Traditional_compilation

 

However, you can just pull linux-mainline from AUR.

[wamred]

Haha, that sounds like something he would say. 

[Guest willies leg]

Dropped itanium support.

 

What a boondoggle itanium was, good riddance!