After just 65 days of development, Linus Torvalds has released version 2.6.39 of the Linux kernel. The new release includes support for ipset which simplified firewall configuration and deployment by allowing updatable and quickly searchable external tables to be used by the network filtering. Interrupt handling can now be handled almost entirely by kernel threads, the ext4 file system and block layers are now able to scale better and show better performance and the kernel now includes a network backend for Xen virtualisation.

As always, the new kernel brings hundreds of new or enhanced drivers. For example, support for AMD's current "Cayman" family of high end graphics cards and GPUs arrived with a simple DRM/KMS driver. Also new in this release are drivers for the function keys of Samsung notebooks and the Realtek RTL8192CU and RTL8188CU Wi-Fi chips.

Details on these and the many other new features in Linux 2.6.39 are provided in a The H feature article What's new in Linux 2.6.39 which also gives a foretaste of some of the changes which may feature in the end of July's expected release of Linux 2.6.40.

More detail on the enhancements of Linux 2.6.39 are available in the Kernel Log "Coming in..." mini-series for 2.6.39 which include detailed listings of the notable commits and changes.



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