Linus Torvalds Just Released Linux 5.19 Stable for the latest Linux kernel. He also mentioned that this is the first time he has launched a new Linux kernel from an ARM64 laptop in the form of an Apple MacBook powered by the AArch64 Apple M1 SoC.
Linux 5.19 brings Many new features From initial LoongArch CPU support to ongoing work on updating AMD Zen 4 CPUs, ongoing AMD RDNA3 enabled, more work on Intel DG2/Alchemist, Intel Idle driver support for Alder Lake, Raw Raptor Lake P graphics support, Zstd firmware ROM and some great performance improvements.
Asahi Linux
In today’s Linux 5.19 release announcement, Linus Torvalds continued to write about using the Arm-based MacBook now on Linux, thanks to the work of the Asahi Linux Project:
Personally, the most interesting part here is that I made the version (as I’m writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It’s something I’ve been waiting for for a long time and it has finally come true thanks to the Asahi team. We’ve had arm64 machines running Linux for a long time, but none of them have actually been used as a development platform yet.
It’s the third time I’ve used Apple hardware for Linux development – I did this many years ago to develop powerpc on my ppc970. A decade ago, when the Macbook Air was the only thin and light device. And now as arm64 platform.
Not that I’ve used this in any real work, I’m literally running tests and tests, and now it’s flagged as the real version. But I am trying to make sure that next time I travel I can travel with this as a laptop and finally try the arm64 side as well.
More comments can be found at release announcement.
Linus Torvalds also noted that he would likely end up calling Linux 5.20 Linux kernel 6.0.
Look at me Linux 5.19 Features Overview For a full list of the major changes in this new kernel.
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