Kernel 4.10 has the honor of being christened the “Anniversary Edition” by Linus Torvalds. I’m guessing this is because of the recent 25th anniversary of the release of Linux 0.01. Admittedly, it is a bit late for that (the anniversary was back in September); however, Linus had not named any of the recent releases for the occasion, opting instead for naming them after several deranged animals.
things to look forward to in 4.10
- HID for Microsoft Surface 3 and 4. Which means external HID-compliant USB devices such as mice and keyboards will now work.
- Lots of drivers for TV tuners, webcams and video cameras have found their way into this kernel. Boxes like the Cinergy S2 and sticks like the EVOLVEO XtraTV are now supported.
- What else? Well, more ARM devices of course! The Nexus 5 and 6 are now both supported, as well as two Android TV boxes, the A1 and A95X by Nexbox. A popular Raspberry Pi competitor, the PINE64, is also now supported (no more hacked Android 3.x kernels for you), as is the Renesas “R-Car Starter Kit Pro,” a low-cost automotive board.
- The perf c2c tool adds cacheline contentions analysis, useful for tracking down performance problems when several cores try to access and modify the same bit of memory at the same time. Perf also gets detailed history of scheduling events.
For a full list of changes, some in depth explanations, as well as links to the commits, take a look at this entry on kernel newbies website.