Linux Kernel 5.15 Is Out! Here’s What’s New

Linus Torvalds has announced the availability of the next LTS Linux Kernel 5.15, and as always, there are new features to be excited about, so here’s what’s new in Linux Kernel 5.15 LTS.

Linux Kernel 5.15 LTS: What’s New?

In the release announcement, Linus says, “The last week of 5.15 was mainly networking, and GPU fixes with some random sprinkling of other things (a few btrfs reverts, some KVM updates, minor other fixes here and there – a few architecture fixes, couple of tracing, small driver fixes, etc.). A full shortlog appended,” suggesting that the release isn’t massive. He also expects the next merger window to be “small and calm.”

Improved NTFS3 Driver

The new NTFS file system from Parangon Software adds more features and enhances the performance of the NTFS3 driver. The same will also be kept upstream for the future. Overall, this update should make using NTFS file systems much smoother.

KSMBD (An In-Kernel SMB File Server)

5.15 LTS ships with KSMBD, an in-kernel SMB file server that should perform better and support RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access).

AMD CPU/GPU Improvements

Temperature monitoring for AMD Zen 3 APUs is finally here! Apart from that, the kernel also adds support for the upcoming RDNA2 graphics cards.

Improved Apple M1 Support

The IOMMU driver of Apple M1 was added to improve support for Apple’s M1 chip. We can expect more changes to make their way into the next kernel release.

Improved Support for Intel’s 12th Gen CPUs

Intel announced their Alder Lake series a couple of weeks ago, and while Alder Lake on Linux was optimized in the Linux Kernel 5.14 itself, 5.15 improved support by including the TCC driver.

For starters, TCC stands for Time Coordinated Computing, and it is used to alter the performance of Intel CPUs. Not only that, but the update also includes support for Intel DG2 discrete graphics and XeHP.

As always, don’t forget to leave your thoughts and opinions about the release in the comments section below.