Linux Kernel 6.5 is released, Added multiple functions, updated drivers, and provided better hardware support

After more than a month in the RC phase, Linus Torvalds has today announced the release of the final version of the Linux Kernel 6.5 series. This update is a significant one, introducing myriad new features, updating certain drivers, and providing enhanced hardware support, among other modifications.

Newly incorporated features include MIDI 2.0 support within ALSA, ACPI support within the RISC-V architecture, Landlock support for UML (User-Mode Linux), optimizations for AMD ZEN, and user space support for the Arm v8.8 memcpy/memset instructions.

The official release of Linux Kernel 6.5 also brings forth support for the Power Capping subsystem (typically used in servers) and Intel RAPL’s TPMI interface driver. Moreover, there’s the introduction of the runnable elevation feature in the EAS balancer, which aids in boosting CPU utilization under specific workloads.

Further enhancements encompass improvements in the SMP scheduler’s load balancer to identify SMT cores with multiple busy threads, allowing lower-priority CPUs to pull tasks and avert unnecessary migrations; along with performance improvements for the EXT4 filesystem’s logs, block allocator subsystem, and parallel DIO overlays.

The latest source code and comprehensive update logs can be accessed on the official Linux Kernel website.

It’s worth noting that the current offering is the kernel source code. One needs to download and compile it independently. If you find the process daunting or deem an immediate update unnecessary, you might opt to await the compilation and distribution to repositories by developers of your Linux distribution.