[Linux] Linux Kernel 5.19 has been released with major network and other changes

[Deliric -]

 

A brand new version of the Linux kernel is available for download to end July or signal the beginning of August, depending on your locale!

Linux 5.19 is a pretty big update, and it includes a lot of low-level optimizations, some notable improvements to networking support, hugely important security fixes, and more.

Announcing the release on the Linux Kernel mailing list, Linus Torvalds notes “… the most interesting part here is that I did the release (and am writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It's something we've been waiting for a long time, and it's finally a reality, thanks to the Asahi team."

Asahi is the project to make Linux work on laptops that use Apple Silicon.

He also says that the next version of the Linux Kernel is "likely" to be labeled as v6.0 rather than 5.20 - we'll be hearing more about that approach in the coming weeks.

Features of Linux Kernel 5.19'

The underlying network code for wireless and wired connections, as well as many individual network drivers see improvements in Linux 5.19. This includes support for Big TCP, a driver for pureLiFi (a very exciting new light-based networking technology), and a core driver for Silicon Labs' low-power WFX Wi-Fi IoT receivers.

There are also additional improvements to Multi-Path TCP (MPTCP), including user-space support for the MPTCP path manager; Wake-on-LAN support has been added to Qualcomm's ATH11K driver; while the RTW89 wireless driver now includes support for Realtek 8852ce 5GHz devices.

Zstd compression is a trend these days, and in Linux 5.19 the kernel picks up support for Zstd compressed firmware. This provides a space-saving alternative to XZ compressed firmware support.

Do you have an Intel laptop? Many Linux users have faced issues with their laptop running hot and draining battery faster than expected in sleep mode. Linux kernel 5.19 makes changes to fix this and should mean laptops equipped with Intel Skylake through Comet Lake chips run cooler and don't drain battery while snoozing.

There is a huge amount of code related to the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem, which is primarily aimed at supporting AMD GPUs, but also benefits Intel and even some ARM GPU chips.

On the Apple Silicon side, an Apple M1 NVMe controller and an Apple eFuses driver have been combined to provide additional support for running Linux systems on Apple's game-changing processors (coming now in a clip).

Hardware monitoring continues to improve thanks to additions to the HWMON subsystem. In this core, this core brings better sensor coverage to various motherboards, including a lot of boards from ASUS, including their PRIME X470-PRO and ProArt X570 Creator series. There are also code drops to support fan controllers in Aquacomputer's offerings.

Owners of the (rather lumpy) Lenovo ThinkPad TrackPoint II keyboard are in for a treat. The device, which is modeled after Lenovo's ThinkPad laptop keyboards, "runs" on earlier versions of the Kernel. But in Linux 5.19 the keyboard gains a "native" mode. This provides a better experience, including proper function button mapping, native scrolling, and support for middle buttons.

Continuing with keyboards, Linux 5.19 improves support for Keychron wireless mechanical keyboards. Devices like the Keychron K2 and K10 already work with Linux, but this kernel boost sweetens things up by ensuring that the function keys work reliably, even when switching between the Windows/Mac mode of certain models.

 

Linux 5.19 is available for download as source code right now, although most of us will want to wait for our distribution maintainer to package the update and release it as a software update. On Ubuntu, that won't happen for a while, although Pop!_OS likes (I think) to push out newer kernel versions relatively promptly.

Are you feeling brave? You can grab a spot on Canonical's mainline repo for the latest builds, just note that they don't come with any warranty or support guarantee.