Linux kernel 6.9-rc1 released
So two weeks have passed, the merge window is over, and v6.9-rc1 is tagged and pushed out.
This merge window looks to be fairly normal. If you look at the diffs, you'd think that the bulk of all the changes are AMD GPU header files again, and you'd not be entirely wrong. About 40% of the whole 6.9rc1 patch is indeed just the auto-generated AMD GPU definitions. I wish this was unusual, but it's a pattern.
Anyway, while that is a lot of the actual changes by pure line numbers, it's all just basically noise and not meaningful in the big picture.
In contrast, what _is_ meaningful is a couple of very core updates. The timer subsystem had a fairly big rewrite, to have per-cpu timer wheels to improve performance of timers, which can be a big deal particularly for networking. The other fairly notable core update is to the workqueue subsystem, where one notable addition is for BH workqueue support. That's notable mainly because it means we finally have a way away from tasklets. The tasklet interface has basically been deprecated for a long while, but we've never really had any good alternatives (with threaded interrupt handlers being one suggested use-case, but not realistic in many cases).
The core updates should be entirely invisible to users, as they don't involve any semantic changes, just expanded capabilities. Of course, being somewhat big changes, they did cause a few issues, but we've hopefully already caught all the big deals.
Anyway, there's obviously also all the usual updates, and even when you ignore the recurring AMD header drop more than half of actual patch is - as usual - various driver updates all over. And all the other usual suspects: architecture updates, various filesystems (old ntfs core removal might be worth noting), core networking, VM and kernel. And tooling and documentation.
Please commence testing,
Linus
Full source: https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/t/linux-6.9-rc1.tar.gz
Patch: https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/p/v6.9-rc1/v6.8
You can view the summary of the changes at the following URL:
https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/ds/v6.9-rc1/v6.8
Alex Williamson (1):
VFIO updates
Alexandre Belloni (2):
i3c updates
RTC updates
Amir Goldstein (1):
overlayfs fixes
Andreas Larsson (1):
sparc updates
Andrew Morton (2):
MM updates
non-MM updates
Andy Shevchenko (1):
auxdisplay updates
Ard Biesheuvel (3):
EFI updates
EFI fix
EFI fixes
Arnd Bergmann (6):
SoC device tree updates
ARM SoC driver updates
ARM SoC code updates
ARM defconfig updates
asm-generic updates
more ARM SoC updates
Bartosz Golaszewski (1):
gpio updates
Bjorn Andersson (3):
remoteproc updates
rpmsg updates
hwspinlock updates
Bjorn Helgaas (1):
PCI updates
Boqun Feng (1):
RCU updates
Borislav Petkov (7):
RAS fixlet
x86 cpu update
x86 MTRR update
resource control updates
x86 SEV updates
misc x86 fixes
EDAC updates
Casey Schaufler (1):
smack updates
Catalin Marinas (2):
arm64 updates
arm64 fixes
Chandan Babu (2):
xfs updates
xfs fixes
Christian Brauner (8):
misc vfs updates
ntfs update
iomap updates
pdfd updates
file locking updates
block handle updates
vfs uuid updates
vfs fixes
Christoph Hellwig (2):
dma-mapping updates
dma-mapping fixes
Chuck Lever (1):
nfsd updates
Damien Le Moal (1):
zonefs update
Dan Williams (1):
CXL updates
Dave Airlie (2):
drm updates
drm fixes
Dave Hansen (4):
x86 mm updates
x86 tdx update
x86 RFDS mitigation
x86 APIC fixup
Dave Jiang (1):
libnvdimm updates
David Sterba (3):
btrfs updates
affs update
btrfs fix
David Teigland (1):
dlm updates
Dmitry Torokhov (1):
input updates
Dominik Brodowski (1):
PCMCIA updates
Eric Biggers (2):
fscrypt updates
fsverity update
Eric Van Hensbergen (1):
9p updates
Gao Xiang (1):
erofs updates
Geert Uytterhoeven (1):
m68k updates
Greg KH (5):
USB / Thunderbolt updates
tty / serial driver updates
staging driver updates
char/misc and other driver subsystem updates
driver core updates
Guenter Roeck (1):
hwmon updates
Heiko Carstens (2):
s390 updates
more s390 updates
Helge Deller (2):
parisc architecture updates and fixes
fbdev updates
Herbert Xu (1):
crypto updates
Huacai Chen (1):
LoongArch updates
Ilpo Järvinen (1):
x86 platform driver updates
Ilya Dryomov (1):
ceph updates
Ingo Molnar (10):
locking updates
scheduler updates
x86 asm updates
x86 build updates
x86 cleanups
core x86 updates
x86 boot updates
x86 perf event fixes
timer fix
irq fix
Jaegeuk Kim (1):
f2fs update
Jakub Kicinski (2):
networking updates
networking fixes
James Bottomley (2):
SCSI updates
more SCSI updates
Jan Kara (2):
fsnotify updates
ext2, isofs, udf, and quota updates
Jarkko Sakkinen (1):
tpm updates
Jason Gunthorpe (1):
rdma updates
Jassi Brar (1):
mailbox updates
Jens Axboe (5):
io_uring updates
block updates
block fixes
more io_uring updates
more block updates
Jiri Kosina (1):
HID updates
Joel Granados (1):
sysctl updates
Joerg Roedel (1):
iommu updates
John Paul Adrian Glaubitz (1):
sh updates
Jonathan Corbet (2):
documentation updates
more documentation updates
Juergen Gross (1):
xen updates
Julia Lawall (1):
coccinelle update
Kees Cook (5):
pstore updates
execve updates
hardening updates
seccomp updates
more hardening updates
Kent Overstreet (2):
bcachefs updates
bcachefs fixes
Lee Jones (3):
MFD updates
backlight updates
LED updates
Linus Walleij (1):
pin control updates
Luis Chamberlain (1):
modules updates
Mark Brown (5):
regmap updates
regulator updates
spi updates
regulator fix
spi fixes
Masahiro Yamada (1):
Kbuild updates
Masami Hiramatsu (1):
probes updates
Mauro Carvalho Chehab (1):
media updates
Michael Ellerman (2):
powerpc updates
more powerpc updates
Michael Tsirkin (1):
virtio updates
Mickaël Salaün (1):
landlock updates
Miguel Ojeda (2):
compiler attributes update
Rust updates
Mike Marshall (1):
orangefs updates
Mike Snitzer (4):
device mapper updates
device mapper BH workqueue conversion
device mapper VDO target
device mapper fixes
Miklos Szeredi (1):
fuse updates
Miquel Raynal (1):
MTD updates
Namhyung Kim (1):
perf tools updates
Namjae Jeon (1):
exfat updates
Niklas Cassel (2):
ata updates
ata fix
Palmer Dabbelt (1):
RISC-V updates
Paolo Bonzini (1):
kvm updates
Paul Moore (4):
audit updates
selinux updates
lsm updates
lsm fixes
Petr Mladek (1):
printk updates
Rafael Wysocki (6):
power management updates
ACPI updates
thermal control updates
more thermal control updates
more ACPI updates
more power management updates
Richard Weinberger (1):
UBI and UBIFS updates
Rob Herring (1):
devicetree updates
Russell King (1):
ARM updates
Sebastian Reichel (2):
HSI updates
power supply and reset updates
Shuah Khan (2):
kselftest update
KUnit updates
Stafford Horne (1):
OpenRISC updates
Stephen Boyd (1):
clk updates
Steve French (3):
smb client updates
smb server updates
smb client fixes
Steven Rostedt (4):
tracing updates
tracing updates
ktest updates
trace tool updates
Takashi Iwai (3):
sound updates
sound fixes
more sound fixes
Takashi Sakamoto (1):
firewire updates
Ted Ts'o (1):
ext4 updates
Tejun Heo (3):
workqueue updates
workqueue BH conversions
cgroup updates
Thomas Bogendoerfer (1):
MIPS updates
Thomas Gleixner (14):
irq updates
MSI updates
cpu core updates
clocksource updates
timer updates
x86 APIC updates
x86 FRED support
x86 entry update
core entry fix
irq fixes
more clocksource updates
timer fixes
scheduler doc clarification
x86 fixes
Trond Myklebust (1):
NFS client updates
Tzung-Bi Shih (1):
chrome platform firmware updates
Ulf Hansson (2):
MMC updates
pmdomain updates
Uwe Kleine-König (2):
pwm updates
siox updates
Vinod Koul (3):
soundwire updates
dmaengine updates
phy updates
Vlastimil Babka (1):
slab updates
Wei Liu (1):
hyperv updates
Wim Van Sebroeck (1):
watchdog updates
Wolfram Sang (2):
i2c updates
more i2c updates
Yury Norov (1):
bitmap updates
The first release candidate for Linux kernel 6.9 has been announced by Linus Torvalds. The majority of the changes that have been made are to the header files for AMD GPUs. Approximately forty percent of the patch is comprised of AMD GPU definitions that were generated automatically. However, the core updates are significant, including a rewrite of the timer subsystem to improve performance and a new workqueue subsystem for BH workqueue support. Both of these updates enhance the functionality of the system.
