Linux Kernel 5.1 RC1 releases
The Linux kernel is an open source monolithic Unix-like computer operating system kernel. The Linux family of operating systems is based on this kernel and deployed on both traditional computer systems such as personal computers and servers, usually in the form of Linux distributions, and on various embedded devices such as routers, wireless access points, PBXes, set-top boxes, FTA receivers, smart TVs, PVRs, and NAS appliances. The Android operating system for tablet computers, smartphones, and smartwatches uses services provided by the Linux kernel to implement its functionality. While the adoption on desktop computers is low, Linux-based operating systems dominate nearly every other segment of computing, from mobile devices to mainframes. As of November 2017, all of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers run Linux.
The Linux kernel was conceived and created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his personal computer and with no cross-platform intentions, but has since expanded to support a huge array of computer architectures, many more than other operating systems or kernels. Linux rapidly attracted developers and users who adopted it as the kernel for other free software projects, notably the GNU Operating System. The Linux kernel has received contributions from nearly 12,000 programmers from more than 1,200 companies, including some of the largest software and hardware vendors.
Larry Ewing, Simon Budig and Anja Gerwinski [Public domain or Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons
It's Sunday, and two weeks have passed, and everything is normal. You
all know the drill by now - the merge window is closed, and things are
supposed to calm down.
The merge window felt fairly normal to me. And looking at the stats,
nothing really odd stands out either. It's a regular sized release
(which obviously means "big" - , but it's not bigger than usual) and
the bulk of it (just over 60%) is drivers. All kinds of drivers, the
one that stands out for being different is the habanalabs AI
accelerator chip driver, but I suspect we'll be starting to see more
of that kind of stuff. But there are all the usual suspects too - gpu,
networking, block devices etc etc.
A somewhat recent development is how the tools/testing/ updates have
been quite noticeable lately. That's not new to the 5.1 merge window,
it's been going on for a while, but it's maybe just worth a mention
that we have more new selftest changes than we have architecture
updates, for example. The documentation subdirectory is also quite
noticeable.
But on the whole, there's really stuff all over, including core VFS
updates (in addition to all the usual low-level filesystem updates
too, of course).
And as always, the shortlog is much too big to post with 11k+ commits
(12k+ if counting merges). So below is my usual "mergelog" listing
submaintainers and a summary of the git pulls I've done from them..
Go forth and test,
Linus