After much anticipation, Linus Torvalds has finally announced the new main line of Linux Kernel 5.8. According to network security course experts, the latest version surpasses the already successful stability-successful 5.7 kernel, including also the changes implemented during the 5.8 kernel merge window.
The latest version received the most requests during the merge period that have been registered, so the founder and principal maintainer of the operating system named The Linux version 5.8 “the largest release of all time”. In total, the system developers received 17595 requests.
Despite Torvalds’ expectation and enthusiasm, Linux 5.8 is not the larger version, if file changes and the inclusion of new lines of code are taken into account, network security course experts mention. For more information about the state of git in any Linux kernel, see the data added by Thorsteen Leemhuis, also known as “The Linux Kernel Logger”.
Major changes
The 5.8 kernel includes multiple updates ranging from memory management, file system, graphics, hardware support, security measures, improved drivers, among other features.
Network security course experts consider the most important features of this release to be:
- Support for exchanging Fn and Ctrl keys on Apple system keyboard
- Intel Tiger Lake Thunderbolt support
- Habana Labs Gaudi accelerator support
- Initial support for booting POWER10 processors
- Qualcomm Adreno 405, 640 and 650 GPU driver support
- Mechanism for reporting events in the kernel
- Support for online encryption hardware
- Shadow Stack Call and Branch Target Identification support in AMR64
- New ARM SoC and platform support
- Initial support for booting POWER10 processors
- Thunderbolt support for Intel Tiger Lake systems and non-x86+ systems
Like previous versions, Linux 5.8 continues to add enhancements to amd Radeon open source graphics drivers, Microsoft exFAT drivers, EXT4, and Btrfs file systems. Another change to note is the removal of terms such as <<master>> or <<slave>>, which can be replaced by inclusive terminology.
Users who wish to test the new kernel version can download it from the official Linux platforms. With regard to users of distributions like Arch Linux, they can get version 5.8 by updating their system in the conventional way. On the other hand, distributions such as Debian or Ubuntu may take longer to upgrade to Linux 5.8, although developers recommend not trying the latest version. However, if you insist on knowing this release firsthand, you can download it from Ubuntu and install it manually.
