Linux kernel 6.11 is out – with its own BSOD

Vienna, Austria: Linus Torvalds and I are both in Vienna, which is being blasted by a storm. So, instead of looking at museums, I spent my time writing, and he spent his time releasing the Linux 6.11 kernel. 

Torvalds wrote, “I’m once again on the road and not in my normal timezone, but it’s Sunday afternoon here in Vienna, and 6.11 is out.” Torvalds doesn’t see this as a major release. 

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He continued, “The short log is below for anybody who wants to look at the details, but there aren’t very many patches, and the patches are all pretty small. Nothing in particular stands out — the biggest patch here is for Hyper-V Confidential Computing documentation.”

Small patches, though, can have big results.

Arch Linux developers and users should be pleased since The kernel now supports easily building Pacman kernel packages. Pacman — no, not the game — is Arch’s default package management system. Starting with 6.11, the “make pacman-pkg” enables developers to create native packages from the kernel tree. The command will take care of the package correctly, configuring the initramfs generation and bootloader configuration. It will also do a better job of handling uninstalls. The new package also has easy-to-install user-space application programming interfaces (API) headers.

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This latest version introduces several enhancements, particularly for AMD hardware users, while offering broader system improvements and new capabilities. These include: 

RDNA4 Graphics Support: The kernel now includes baseline support for AMD’s upcoming RDNA4 graphics architecture. This early integration bodes well for future AMD GPU releases, ensuring Linux users have day-one support.

Core Performance Boost: The AMD P-State driver now includes handling for AMD Core Performance Boost. This driver gives AMD Core users more granular control over turbo and boost frequency ranges.

Fast Collaborative Processor Performance Control (CPPC) Support: Overclockers who want the most power possible from their computers will be happy with this improvement to the AMD P-State driver. This feature enhances power efficiency on recent Ryzen (Zen 4) mobile processors. This can improve performance by 2-6% without increasing power consumption.

AES-GCM Crypto Performance: AMD and Intel CPUs benefit from significantly faster AES-GCM encryption and decryption processing, up to 160% faster than previous versions.

In another hardware-related development, initial support has been added for laptops based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 platform. This includes support for ASUS and Lenovo models.

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For Chromebook users, such as yours truly, the 6.11 kernel also includes several features that will make Linux run better on Chromebooks. In addition, since I always run Debian Linux ChromeOS, on my Chromebooks, I’m looking forward to seeing how this release will improve my laptop experience. 

Beyond hardware-specific updates, Linux 6.11 introduces several system-wide enhancements. While they’re not impressive, as Torvalds said in his keynote at Open Source Summit Europe, “Releases aren’t exciting, but they’re not supposed to be. Exciting is not the goal.” Making your work and fun more productive is the goal. 

So, while NVMe and SCSI storage devices now have initial support for block atomic writes, which doesn’t sound that exciting, it does potentially improve I/O performance. Anyone who wants to get the most speed from the appropriate drivers should be pretty excited about the results.

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Finally, something both amusing and informative, going forward, Linux will now have its own version of Windows’s Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).  The Linux BSOD will show up on those vanishingly rare occasions when Linux runs into a critical error.  I’ve witnessed this occur on average once a year or so, and I run Linux pretty much non-stop. One interesting feature of these new BSODs is that, written in Rust, they shrink down Linux kernel error messages, which are often quite long, into a much easier-to-manage QR code.

Speaking of Rust, Torvalds noted in his keynote that some kernel developers dislike Rust. Torvalds said,  I’m not quite sure why Rust has been such a contentious area. It reminds me of when I was young. People were arguing about vi versus Emacs. Maybe they still are, but for some reason, the whole Rust versus C discussion has taken almost religious overtones in certain areas.” While he finds these arguments amusing, he thinks Rust will play a significant role in Linux, and the groundwork to expand Rust’s use in Linux is continuing.

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With Linux 6.11 now released, attention turns to the upcoming 6.12 kernel. Expected to debut in November 2024, Linux 6.12 is anticipated to be this year’s Long-Term Support (LTS) release. Torvalds also said he believes it will contain long-delayed features such as the new eBPF-based scheduler and, after 20 years of work, the final implementation of real-time Linux (RTLinux). 

After Linux Plumbers, which is always being held this week in Vienna, I hope to be able to give you a better idea, if — at long, long last — both the scheduler and RTLinux will finally appear. 

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