Linux kernel 6.8 has been released now by Linus Torvalds and as usual, there's absolutely tons of changes and new features.
From the release announcement: "This is not the historically big release that 6.7 was - we seem to be back to a fairly average release size for the last few years. You can see it in the overall diffstats too - this looks like an average release in pretty much all respects, and we don't have (for example) any obvious big new filesystems or architectures. I think the biggest single new thing in 6.8 is probably the new Xe drm driver, but honestly, the big bulk of changes are just various random updates and fixes all over." — Linus Torvalds
Just a small selection of what's new includes:
- New Intel Xe GPU driver.
- Lenovo Legion Go controllers support in xpad.
- AMDGPU has a bunch of new colour management code that is being used in the Steam Deck.
- Improved Steam Deck OLED support.
- Added a hotkey to switch between gamepad mode and mouse/keyboard mode to the HID driver for Valve's Steam Controller - mirroring the behaviour in the Steam client.
- Added support for Nintendo Switch Online controllers - SNES, Genesis and N64.
- Support for the Anberic RG351V, Powkiddy X55 and RK2023 handhelds.
- New driver for Adafruit Mini I2C Seesaw gamepad.
- Apple M1 USB4/Thunderbolt DART support.
- Support poweroff on Orange Pi 5.
- Raspberry Pi 5 support for V3D graphics driver.
- Intel Lunar Lake support for Thunderbolt.
- Various other new hardware support, filesystem improvements and the list goes on and on.
The full complete kernel 6.8 changelog is here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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benstor214 Mar 11
This reminds me that the 6.6.6 release was way too short lived for my taste.
You know… for satanic reasons 😈
You know… for satanic reasons 😈
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Quoting: vipor29i have a arc a750 laying around i might have to test that driver out
I have seen some arc cards for cheap and I would like to know how your testing goes because if they're good enough for gaming, then I might consider getting one of these.
Now, I do wonder if any of these kernel changes will make it into the Steam Deck because I'm curious to see if having the Xe drivers will make certain games that use it run better.
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dziadulewicz Mar 11
Quoting: benstor214This reminds me that the 6.6.6 release was way too short lived for my taste.
You know… for satanic reasons 😈
What an angel. Using a free and user respecting operating system powered by Linux. You know what Spydows is made of? It's not made of a human number six six six but shit shit shit.
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benstor214 Mar 11
Quoting: dziadulewiczWhat an angel. Using a free and user respecting operating system powered by Linux. You know what Spydows is made of? It's not made of a human number six six six but shit shit shit.What? I think you are barking up the wrong tree here.
I'm on Arch, btw.
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Quoting: ToddLNow, I do wonder if any of these kernel changes will make it into the Steam Deck because I'm curious to see if having the Xe drivers will make certain games that use it run better.
The driver changes shouldn't be relevant to the Steam Deck, because the Xe driver is for Intel graphics, and the Steam Deck uses AMD graphics.
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CyborgZeta Mar 11
I use an Arc A770. I'd be curious to know if the new Xe driver is enabled by default, or if I'd have to manually enable it.
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Avehicle7887 Mar 11
Quoting: CyborgZetaI use an Arc A770. I'd be curious to know if the new Xe driver is enabled by default, or if I'd have to manually enable it.
According to Phoronix it appears to be still in experimental, so my guess is that it's not default yet.
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Quoting: FreeFullQuoting: ToddLNow, I do wonder if any of these kernel changes will make it into the Steam Deck because I'm curious to see if having the Xe drivers will make certain games that use it run better.
The driver changes shouldn't be relevant to the Steam Deck, because the Xe driver is for Intel graphics, and the Steam Deck uses AMD graphics.
You're right. I got it confused with XeSS and somehow made the mistake of thinking of Xe drivers being the same thing.
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