Linux 3.1 kernel release

    After 3 months of development, the final stable version of the Linux 3.1 kernel was released. On October 24, Linus Torvalds introduced the new kernel version at the Linux Developers Summit, and is now available for download.

    Support for the open processor architecture OpenRISC, a new implementation of the iSCSI subsystem appeared in the kernel.

    9403 fixes were introduced to the new kernel version. Work with drivers and various supported file systems, such as Btrfs, NFS, XFS, FAT, HFS + and SquashFS, has undergone major refinement. Updated Nvidia Nouveau drivers, added support for hardware acceleration of 3D graphics for some Nvidia GeForce cards and Nvidia Fermi architecture chips.

    Among the innovations, the following can be noted:
    • A set of cpupowerutils power management utilities.
    • Improving the performance of KVM and Xen virtualizers. There is backward support for Xen PCI for faster switching between devices connected via PCI and PCI Express, as well as support for embedded VMX (AMD Virtualization).
    • The ability to use disks with defective blocks on some RAID levels, which was made possible thanks to a special code for controlling bad blocks in software RAID.
    • Added support for files up to 4 GB in size for the Fat16 file system. The file size in tmpfs can now reach 2 TB.
    • Speed ​​up the work of Slab allocator.
    • In the Ext3 file system, “barriers” are activated.
    • The ability to change the kernel number to 2.6.x to run some applications that are not yet compatible with Linux 3.1.
    • Many new drivers have also been added and old ones have been updated.

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