{"id":139749,"date":"2025-07-28T17:11:54","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T15:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prohoster.info\/blog\/novosti-interneta\/reliz-yadra-linux-6-16"},"modified":"2025-07-28T17:11:54","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T15:11:54","slug":"reliz-yadra-linux-6-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prohoster.info\/en\/blog\/news\/reliz-yadra-linux-6-16","title":{"rendered":"Release of Linux kernel 6.16.","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"
After two months of development, Linus Torvalds presented the release of the Linux kernel 6.16. Among the most notable changes are: a driver for accelerating OpenVPN, the Kexec HandOver mechanism, enabling five-level page tables for x86 by default, the removal of the DCCP protocol, the zloop block driver, the ability to send core dumps via a UNIX socket, support for atomic write operations in XFS, offload processing of audio for USB devices, optimizations in Ext4, a virtual TPM (Trusted Platform Module) driver, a full implementation of Device Memory TCP, support for unnamed pipes in io_uring, preparation for the integration of the Asahi DRM driver, the \u201cusermode queue\u201d mechanism in the AMDGPU driver, and support for Intel TDE (Trusted Domain Extensions) and Intel APE (Advanced Performance Extensions). <\/p>\n
The new version includes 15,924 fixes from 2,145 developers, with a patch size of 50 MB (the changes affected 13,793 files, adding 655,451 lines of code and removing 316,441 lines). In the previous release, there were 15,945 fixes from 2,154 developers, with a patch size of 59 MB. About 45% of all changes in 6.16 are related to device drivers, approximately 16% pertain to code updates specific to hardware architectures, 13% are related to the networking stack, 4% to file systems, and 3% to internal kernel subsystems. <\/p>\n
Key innovations in kernel 6.16: <\/p>\n
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Disk subsystem, input\/output, and file systems<\/b>\n
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A zloop driver has been added to create zoned block loopback devices, which are mounted in loop mode. The driver emulates the behavior of regular block devices using several files from an existing file system (one file for each zone). This feature may be useful for testing file systems, device mapper handlers, and applications for their support of zoned devices that apply zone grouping of blocks or sectors, which only allow sequential data addition with the entire group of blocks being updated.\n
The XFS file system now supports atomic writes of large data chunks\u2014several blocks can now be written atomically (either all blocks will be successfully written, or none will).\n
In the Ext4 file system, the performance of the 'fast commit' mechanism has been improved. Support for large folios of memory pages has been added for regular files, which increased performance by 37% in intensive sequential I\/O tests. Support for atomic write operations covering multiple blocks has also been added.\n
Support for the DAX mechanism, which provides direct access to the FS bypassing the page cache, has been deprecated in the ext2 file system driver. The removal of DAX from the ext2 driver is scheduled for the end of the year. The reason mentioned is the consideration of the ext2 driver as a stable reference implementation, in which the use of specific features that have not gained proper adoption is unacceptable.\n
The OrangeFS, UFS, BFS, and OMFS file systems have been transitioned to use the new partition mounting API.\n
A new vfs_cache_pressure_denom setting has been added to sysctl, allowing control over the number of entries in the \u2018dentry\u2019 cache (the internal representation of directory entries) under low memory conditions in the system. The higher the value set, the more entries can be evicted from the cache (fewer entries will remain in the cache) during memory shortages.\n
In the Bcachefs file system, a new option 'rebalance_on_ac_only' has been added, which prohibits rebalancing and background compression operations when the system is powered by a battery. The operations for deleting snapshots and devices have been accelerated. Memory consumption has been reduced when mounted in read-only mode. The possibility of running some recovery operations in the background without interrupting file system operations has been introduced.\n
The power management subsystem is allowed to independently freeze file systems and EFI variables for sleep and hibernation modes (if the FS is already frozen by the user-space handler, no re-freezing occurs).\n
The performance of EROFS can be accelerated using the built-in Intel QAT (QuickAssist Technology) processor accelerator, which offers tools for speeding up computations related to compression and encryption.\n
The maximum data packet size for read and write operations in NFS has been increased from 1 to 4 MB (the default is set to 1 MB, as not all clients support larger sizes).\n
Unprivileged users with CAP_SYS_ADMIN rights in a separate user namespace, but without elevated rights in the root namespace, are provided the ability to use the fanotify mechanism to monitor changes in file systems.\n
For file systems using the FUSE subsystem, functionality has been added to clear all cached directory entries (dentries) at once. Support for large page folios has been added to the FUSE subsystem.\n
In the OverlayFS, support has been implemented for creating data layers in unprivileged namespaces that utilize integrity checking based on the dm-verity module. This feature allows for combining trusted layers with metadata and untrusted data layers processed in unprivileged namespaces. <\/ul>\n
Memory and system services<\/b>\n
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The KHO (Kexec HandOver) mechanism has been added to launch a new kernel from an old one without losing system state. Before handing control to the new kernel version, the state of key kernel subsystems can be serialized in a memory area that will not be affected by subsequent operations. The new kernel, upon gaining control, restores the serialized state. The Live Update Orchestrator (LUO) subsystem, which allows for kernel reloads without stopping device operations, is being developed based on KHO.\n
A kernel build parameter CONFIG_X86_NATIVE has been added, allowing the use of the '-march=native' option during compilation to optimize according to the capabilities of the processor on the current system.\n
Support for the Intel APX (Advanced Performance Extension) instruction set architecture extension has been added, providing 16 additional general-purpose registers (in addition to the existing 16), allowing for fewer memory read and write operations in code to enhance performance and reduce power consumption.\n
A mode for automatic memory distribution policy tuning in NUMA systems has been added, where all node weights are recalculated when new bandwidth information is available during boot or when memory is hot-plugged.\n
The implementation of futexes has introduced support for a local hash table of processes (local futex_hash_bucket), which, unlike the previously supported global hash table for all processes, is local to a single process and is shared by all threads of that process. Local hash tables are used only for the PROCESS_PRIVATE futex operation. Additionally, the new release adds support for FUTEX2_NUMA and FUTEX2_MPOL options, allowing control over the placement of futexes in memory, positioning them closer to the processes that use them.\n
For x86_64 systems, permanent support for five-level page tables (the CONFIG_X86_5LEVEL parameter that controlled the inclusion of five-level tables has been removed) is included.\n
Support for task scheduler operation with energy awareness (EAS - Energy Aware Scheduling) has been added to the intel_pstate driver, which manages power consumption parameters (P-state) on systems with Intel processors, specifically on hybrid processors that combine high-performance and energy-efficient CPU cores, such as Intel Lunar Lake.\n
In sysfs, interfaces have been added: '\/sys\/devices\/system\/cpu\/cpuN\/cpu_capacity' to obtain information about the capabilities of various CPUs in hybrid processors and '\/sys\/devices\/system\/cpu\/cpuidle\/intel_c1_demotion' to control the ability to keep the CPU in a more performant state even if the core attempts to transition the CPU to a lower power state (for example, the core may request a transition to power state C6, but firmware under high CPU wake-up intensity may keep it in state C1).\n
Support for lazy task preemption mode (PREEMPT_LAZY) has been enabled for the ARM64 architecture, which corresponds to full preemption mode ('full preemption') for real-time tasks (RR\/FIFO\/DEADLINE), but delays the preemption of normal tasks (SCHED_NORMAL) until the tick boundary.\n
For the ARM64 architecture, support for the use of SME (Scalable Matrix Extension) extensions has been added, enabled through the CONFIG_ARM64_SME parameter.\n
The transfer of changes from the Rust-for-Linux branch related to the use of the Rust language as a second language for developing drivers and kernel modules continues (support for Rust is not enabled by default and does not make Rust a mandatory build dependency for the kernel). For modules written in Rust, the use of configfs is provided. Abstractions necessary for developing graphics drivers have been added. The capabilities of the alloc, time, str, list, workqueue, and page modules have been expanded. Support for the macro \"assert!\" in KUnit-based tests has been added. A set of abstractions for managing CPU frequency and using APIs related to power management has been added. Support for the data structure 'xarray' has been included.\n
For the RISC-V architecture, the implementation of the getrandom() system call has been ported, optimized using the vDSO (virtual dynamic shared object) mechanism, which allows shifting the system call handler from the kernel to user space and avoids context switches. In conducted tests, the optimization accelerated random number generation by 17 times. For RISC-V, support for vector extensions Zicbop, Zabha, and Svinval, used in SiFive processors, has also been implemented.\n
For the LoongArch architecture, the limit on the number of CPUs in the system has been raised from 256 to 2048. Support for the SCHED_MC (Multi-core) task scheduler has been added.\n
The ability to use Unix sockets for passing file descriptors has been introduced. To disable this functionality, applications can use the SO_PASSRIGHTS flag in setsockopt().\n
The ability to map a ring buffer used for kernel tracing into user space memory has been provided.\n
Crash-dump handlers used to generate a report on issues after the kernel crashes can now utilize the LUKS keys used by the faulty kernel to save crash dumps in encrypted file systems.\n
The io_uring asynchronous input\/output system has added the IORING_OP_PIPE operation for creating unnamed pipes, similar to the pipe2 system call, except it supports fixed file descriptors.\n
A kernel command line option \"rt_group_sched\" has been added to manage the inclusion of the scheduler for realtime-group tasks (SCHED_RR). The option is similar to the RT_GROUP_SCHED setting in Kconfig.\n
For devices based on the CXL (Compute Express Link) bus, used to organize high-speed interaction between the CPU and memory devices, support for RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) extensions has been implemented, allowing for various error detection and correction schemes. CXL enables the connection of new memory areas provided by external memory devices and uses them as additional resources for the physical address space to expand system RAM (DDR) or persistent memory (PMEM).\n
The minimum required GCC version for kernel compilation across all architectures has been raised to GCC 8. Additionally, at least version 2.30 of the binutils package is now required for compilation.\n
The system call uselib() has been removed, as it has long been deprecated; mmap() is now used for program access to shared libraries. <\/ul>\n
Virtualization and Security<\/b>\n
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Initial support has been added for the Intel TDX (Trusted Domain Extensions) mechanism to protect guest systems running under the KVM hypervisor from intrusion and analysis by the host system administrator, as well as physical attacks on the hardware. Protection is ensured through memory encryption. of virtual machines<\/a>.\n