Linus Torvalds introduced the Linux kernel 4.6

Today, Linus Torvalds introduced the Linux 4.6 kernel , which took two months to work on. The most notable innovations are USB 3.1 SuperSpeedPlus (10Gbps) support, OrangeFS system, Ethernet frame level encryption, BATMAN V mesh protocol, pNFS SCSI for NFSv4.1, 3D acceleration for the NVIDIA GM20x GPU.

Here, in the new version, about 12 thousand fixes from 1500 developers have been implemented. The patch size is 37 MB, with 9990 files being modified. Added 517234 lines of code (when deleting 249061 lines). About half of all changes are related to device drivers.

As for the OrangeFS file system , it is positioned as a system for high-end servers and clusters. Thanks to OrangeFS you can achieve maximum performance when working with data. This is a logical continuation of the development of the famous PVFS project. OrangeFS can show particularly good results when working with BigData, as well as high-performance computing.

The Kernel Connection Multiplexor (KCM) subsystem has also been added , which allows you to work efficiently with receiving and sending messages via TCP using the datagram software interface.

Mesh protocol BATMAN(“Better Approach To Mobile Adhoc Networking) provides the ability to create decentralized networks, where each node is connected through neighboring nodes. The OGM protocol is now divided into two parts: ELP (Echo Location Protocol) and OGMv2.

Adding support for the SuperSpeedPlus protocol boosts USB data transfer speeds, with a maximum of 10Gbps. Theoretically, this speed can be achieved by connecting an external USB 3.1 Gen2 class drive.

In conditions of insufficient memory , the problem of delaying its release in the event of the forced termination of a process / processes has now been solved. As a solution, a separate kernel thread oom_reaper was added .

Standard IEEE 802.1AEThe possibility of encryption in Ethernet at the MAC level (MACsec) is provided. Now this feature is implemented, which allows you to encrypt all traffic on the local network using the GCM-AES-128 algorithm. This feature protects DHCP and VLAN traffic from interception. Modifying Ethernet frame headers is no longer possible.
Finally, support for the GM200 chipset has been added to the DRM driver for NVIDIA video cards (Nouveau) , with the ability to download firmware for the GM20x (GeForce GTX 900), which are verified using a digital signature. This made it possible to use hardware 3D acceleration for the Maxwell GPU.

Of course, new features are much more. A complete list can be found here .