What's new in Linux 3.2

Improvements to the Ext4 filesystem, network code optimisations and thin provisioning support in the Device Mapper are some of the major improvements in Linux 3.2. Further additions include new and improved drivers – for example, for graphics hardware by Intel and NVIDIA, as well as Wi-Fi components by Atheros and Broadcom. After just over two months of development, Linus Torvalds has released version 3.2 of the Linux kernel. With this release, the kernel developers have regained their usual development speed after the intrusion at kernel.org delayed the completion of Linux 3.1 by a few weeks. As a consequence, the now-released kernel offers more changes than has recently been the norm, because the developers had more time to prepare improvements for inclusion into Linux 3.2. Graphics From Linux 3.2 onwards, the DRM/KMS driver for Intel GPUs will enable the very efficient and Intel-specific RC6 graphics power-saving feature by default (1, 2). That change also enabled the Intel-specific technique on Intel's current "Sandy Bridge" by default; unfortunately, soon after the changes were made further problems were found with the "Sandy Bridge" implementation and the kernel developers have disabled "Sandy Bridge" support by default (1, 2) again. Since RC6 lowers the power consumption of many Sandy Bridge systems with Intel graphics by a few watts, it is especially interesting for notebooks as it can significantly extend the battery life. It can be activated on older kernels with the boot parameter i915.i915_enable_rc6=1, but those versions lack fixes for some problems surrounding the use of RC6, which have been included in Linux 3.2. The Nouveau driver now uses the acceleration functions that are available with the auto-generated firmware on the Fermi graphic cores NVC1 (GeForce GT 415M, 420, 420M, 425M, 430, 435M, 525M, 530, 540M, 550M and 555, as well as Quadro 600 and 1000M), NVC8 (GeForce GTX 560 Ti OEM, 570, 580 and 590 as well as Quadro 3000M, 4000M and 5010M) and NVCF (GeForce GTX 550 Ti and 560M) chips; Linux 3.2 will be the first kernel version to support the latter graphics chips.