Good Features For The Linux 3.12 Kernel

While the Linux 3.12 kernel isn't even up to its first RC release and thus the merge window hasn't closed yet, Linux 3.12 has already collected a number of promising features for the open-source kernel.

Of course, many of the kernel changes that get us excited at Phoronix are about graphics and the DRM code:

- Improved Dynamic Power Management support for AMD Radeon GPUs of the HD 8000 generation. DPM and ASPM (PCI Express Active State Power Management) are now both supported. There's also been other improvements to the code supporting the existing power management code that was delivered to much excitement in the Linux 3.11 kernel.

- There's a Snapdragon KMS driver that has been mainlined for those using Qualcomm ARM SoCs on Linux.

- Run-time GPU power management support to be able to dynamically power on/off secondary GPUs in Optimus laptop configurations.

- Experimental DRM render nodes were merged.

- AMD Berlin HSA APU support.

- Intel Haswell eLLC DRAM cache support for the Iris Pro 5200 graphics systems with 128MB of dedicated RAM.

- Various other DRM driver changes.

Other non-graphics changes that were merged for Linux 3.12 include:

- The usual staging driver changes.

- Continued work on improving ACPI and power management on Linux.

- New KVM virtualization features.

- Continued sound driver work for the Linux kernel.

- The EXT4 file-system has better recovery and aggressive extent caching support as new features.

- Samsung has furthered its F2FS file-system.

- Lenovo Ideapad Slidebar support and other changes.

Stay tuned for more Phoronix articles on the remaining code of interest that's still to be merged for Linux 3.12. Plenty of Linux 3.12 kernel benchmarks will also come, of course, on Phoronix in due time.