New Bells and Whistles For Linux Kernel

June 21st, 2006: The latest version of the Linux kernel is out, promising a number of speed improvements, greater wireless capabilities and support for Sun’s Niagara chip architecture.

Nicknamed the “crazed Snow-Weasel,” perhaps due to its short three month development time, Linus Torvalds has given his blessing to the final version of Linux 2.6.17.

The network, DVB and audio hardware modules have been a good touch up, with drivers added for TPM 1.2 chips, Broadcom WLAN (bcm43xx) and the Secure Digital Host Controller Interface for SD memory card support.

To improve speed, the kernel now includes a new I/O mechanism called splice that uses a random kernel buffer to speed up memory calls.

Along with these new features, the addition of Niagara processor architecture support should bring a smile to Sun’s face. Niagara has to date had support within the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, however this is a first for the mainline version.

Linux 2.6.17 is available for download now from kernel.org.

Comment on this story

Related Article:

Open Source More Secure?