Linux 5.10

All news stories about Linux kernel 5.10.

• Linux 5.10 Will Have A Fully Lock-Less Ring Buffer
  
  
  Linus Torvalds has merged a set of printk() patches by John Ogness that make the kernel ring buffer (what you see if you type dmesg) fully lock-less. This is a big improvement that allows messages to be stored and read without the need for temporary per-CPU buffers with no risk of deadlocks.
  
• XFS Patches For Linux 5.10 Delays The Year 2038 Problem To 2486
  
  
  XFS patches for Linux 5.10 submitted by XFS file system maintainer Darrick J. Wong will delay the year 2038 problem for XFS by an additional 448 years. That should be enough to come up with a real long-term solution. The time-stamp patches were submitted as a part of a larger patch-set with a "large pile of new stuff".
  
• AV1 Hardware Video Decode Support For AMD RX 6000 Series GPUs Coming In Linux 5.10
  
  
  AMD has historically been extremely slow compared to Nvidia and Intel when it comes to providing hardware video encoding and decoding capabilities for open video standards like VP8 and VP9. New patches by AMD Open Source Laboratory developer Alex Deucher show that AMD won't be dragging their feet for years before they add AV1 video decoding support to their hardware, it is already there in the upcoming RX 6000 series GPUs. VP9 and AV1 video encoding support is still severely lacking.
  
• Improved Lenovo Laptop Hotkey Support Coming To Linux 5.10
  
  
  The Chinese Lenovo Group promised to Linux certify their laptops and make laptops with Linux available in a big announcement back in July. They have been offering one ThinkPad X1 model with Fedora pre-installed since mid-August. Linux 5.10 will have support for four additional hotkeys on that one laptops Lenovo sells with Fedora pre-installed thanks to RedHat developer Hans de Goede.
  
• Linux 5.10 To Get Creative SoundBlaster AE-7 Audio Card Driver
  
  
  The singaporean technology company Creative Technology Ltd, famous for their Sound Blaster series audio cards, is not a very Linux-friendly company. They do not provide any Linux drivers for their products themselves but they do sometimes respond to requests for help from Linux developers like Linux sound sub-system developer Connor McAdams who has, no thanks to Creative, written a driver for the Creative SoundBlaster AE-7 audio card that will be merged to Linux 5.10 as soon as the merge window opens in September.