We have not really seen any large changes or updates in the Linux kernel for quite some time. This is actually a good thing as it shows that Linux has become a strong, robust and mature kernel.
Development of the kernel progresses fast these days. And there is always plenty going on in the background. Follow the Linux Development Mailing List for one week and you’ll see what I mean. It’s busy. And it shows the dedication and huge amount of effort that the Linux kernel developers put in to each release and update.
So what does Linux kernel 3.10 bring us? Linus Torvalds tells us it’s the biggest update in years, possibly ever. That’s a big statement. And according to Linus, there are many improvements right across the board. Linus Torvalds is quick to point out that these are not all the authors of the code improvements as there are too many developers involved. But as a summary, he attached some of the improvements and the person involved with the Pull Request for the fixes/changes/updates, in his 3.10-rc1 announcement email:
“Al Viro: (7)
VFS updates
compat cleanup
second round of VFS updates
single_open() leak fixes
more vfs updates
more vfs fixes
stray syscall bits
Alasdair Kergon: (1)
device-mapper updates
Alex Elder: (1)
Ceph changes
Alex Williamson: (1)
vfio updates
Andrew Morton: (5)
first batch of fixes
second batch of fixes
third batch of fixes
IPC cleanup and scalability patches
more incoming
Anton Vorontsov: (2)
battery updates
pstore update
Arnd Bergmann: (5)
ARM SoC platform updates (part 2)
ARM SoC platform updates (part 3)
ARM SoC device tree updates (part 2)
ARM SoC late cleanups
late ARM Exynos multiplatform changes
Ben Myers: (2)
xfs update
xfs update (#2)
Benjamin Herrenschmidt: (2)
powerpc update
powerpc updates
Bjorn Helgaas: (2)
PCI updates
PCI updates
Borislav Petkov: (1)
two small EDAC fixes
Bruce Fields: (1)
nfsd fixes
Bryan Wu: (1)
LED subsystem updates
Catalin Marinas: (2)
arm64 update
arm64 update
Chris Ball: (1)
MMC update
Chris Mason: (1)
btrfs update
Chris Metcalf: (2)
tile arch changes
tile update
Chris Zankel: (1)
xtensa updates
Dave Airlie: (1)
drm updates
David Kleikamp: (1)
jfs fixes
David Miller: (5)
networking updates
sparc updates
networking fixes
networking fixes
networking update
David Teigland: (1)
dlm update
David Woodhouse: (2)
MTD update
misc fixes
Dmitry Torokhov: (1)
input updates
Eric Paris: (1)
audit changes
Geert Uytterhoeven: (1)
m68k update
Gleb Natapov: (2)
kvm updates
kvm fixes
Grant Likely: (2)
GPIO changes
removal of GENERIC_GPIO
Greg Kroah-Hartman: (5)
char/misc driver update
driver core update
staging driver tree update
tty/serial driver update
USB patches
Greg Ungerer: (1)
m68knommu updates
Guenter Roeck: (1)
hwmon update
Helge Deller: (1)
parisc updates
Herbert Xu: (1)
crypto update
Ingo Molnar: (18)
locking changes
RCU updates
perf updates
scheduler changes
SMP/hotplug changes
core timer updates
extable dmesg fixlet
x86 cleanups
x86 cpuid changes
x86 debug update
perparatory x86 kasrl changes
x86 mm changes
x86 paravirt update
x86 platform changes
x86 RAS changes
scheduler fixes
perf fixes
‘full dynticks’ support
J Bruce Fields: (1)
nfsd changes
Jaegeuk Kim: (1)
f2fs updates
James “Jej B” Bottomley: (2)
first round of SCSI updates
second SCSI update
James Hogan: (1)
arch/metag update
James Morris: (1)
security subsystem update
Jan Kara: (1)
ext3/jbd fixes
Jean Delvare: (1)
hwmon update
Jeff Garzik: (1)
libata update
Jens Axboe: (2)
block core updates
block driver updates
Jiri Kosina: (4)
trivial tree updates
HID updates
fixup for trivial branch
HID fixes
Joerg Roedel: (1)
IOMMU updates
Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk: (2)
Xen updates
Xen bug-fixes
Len Brown: (1)
idle update
Linus Walleij: (2)
pinctrl update
pinctrl fixes
Mark Brown: (3)
regmap updates
regulator updates
spi updates
Martin Schwidefsky: (2)
s390 update
more s390 updates
Matthew Garrett: (1)
x86 platform drivers
Matthew Wilcox: (1)
NVMe driver update
Mauro Carvalho Chehab: (3)
media update
edac fixes
omap3isp clk support
Michael Tsirkin: (2)
vhost cleanups and fixes
more vhost fixes
Michael Turquette: (1)
clock framework update
Michal Marek: (3)
kbuild changes
kconfig updates
misc kbuild updates
Michal Simek: (1)
microblaze updates
Michel Lespinasse: (1)
rwsem optimizations
Miklos Szeredi: (1)
fuse updates
my IPC branch: (1)
ipc fixes and cleanups
NeilBrown: (1)
md fixes
Nicholas Bellinger: (1)
SCSI target update
Ohad Ben-Cohen: (2)
rpmsg changes
remoteproc update
Olof Johansson: (10)
ARM SoC non-critical fixes
ARM SoC cleanup
ARM SoC device-tree updates
ARM SoC platform updates
ARM SoC multiplatform updates
ARM SoC driver changes
ARM SoC pinctrl changes for Renesas
ARM platform specific firmware interfaces
ARM SoC board specific changes (part 1)
ARM SoC fixes and straggler patches
Pekka Enberg: (1)
slab changes
Peter Anvin: (2)
x86/efi changes
x86 fixes
Rafael J Wysocki: (1)
power management and ACPI updates
Rafael Wysocki: (1)
ACPICA fixes
Ralf Baechle: (1)
MIPS updates
Richard Kuo: (2)
Hexagon fixes
Hexagon fixes
Roland Dreier: (1)
InfiniBand/RDMA changes
Russell King: (1)
ARM updates
Rusty Russell: (2)
virtio & lguest updates
mudule updates
Samuel Ortiz: (1)
MFD update
Sarah Sharp: (1)
ReportingBugs rewrite
Stefan Richter: (1)
firewure updates
Stefano Stabellini: (1)
ARM Xen SMP updates
Steve French: (1)
CIFS fixes
Steven Miao: (1)
blackfin updates
Steven Rostedt: (4)
tracing updates
ktest update
localmodconfig changes
tracing/kprobes update
Steven Whitehouse: (1)
GFS2 updates
Sumit Semwal: (1)
dma-buf updates
Takashi Iwai: (2)
sound updates
sound fixes
Ted Ts’o: (1)
ext4 updates
Tejun Heo: (5)
percpu patch
async update
workqueue updates
cgroup updates
libata maintainership change
Thierry Reding: (1)
pwm changes
Tomi Valkeinen: (1)
fbdev updates
Tony Luck: (2)
ia64 fixes
trivial pstore update
Trond Myklebust: (2)
NFS client bugfixes and cleanups
more NFS client bugfixes
Tyler Hicks: (1)
eCryptfs update
Vineet Gupta: (2)
ARC port updates
second set of arc arch updates
Vinod Koul: (1)
slave-dmaengine updates
Wim Van Sebroeck: (1)
watchdog update
Wolfram Sang: (1)
i2c changes
Zhang Rui: (1)
thermal management update”
So as you can see, Linux kernel 3.10 is going to be a big update. And for the many hoards of developers among the community, there’s plenty of technical goodness to start hacking.
