The Most Exciting Linux 3.11 Kernel Features

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 20 August 2013 at 07:23 AM EDT. 1 Comment
LINUX KERNEL
With the Linux 3.11 kernel due to be released in the coming weeks, here's an overview of the most exciting changes for this next major Linux kernel update.

For Phoronix readers, as has already been covered extensively, the likely most exciting end-user feature is Radeon DPM support as finally implementing dynamic power management support for the open-source AMD driver means better performance, lower operating temperatures, and lower power usage. The benchmarks have been great.

Aside from Radeon DPM, other great 3.11 features include:

- Radeon HD 8000 Sea Islands support.

- Full Intel Bay Trail (Valley View) Linux graphics support.

- H.264 and MPEG-2 video decoding support for the Nouveau driver via the VP2 PureVideo engine.

- Zswap compressed swap caching was finally merged.

- Mainlined on the file-system side was the Lustre client.

- Wine support for Windows RT applications.

- Possible power consumption/performance improvements.

- Tons of other changes.

Expect Linux 3.11 final to be out within a couple weeks time barring any last-minute major regressions.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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