Almost twenty-years ago in August 1993, Microsoft released its second networked version of Windows: Windows for Workgroups 3.11. It wasn't a success. Success for Microsoft in a network-enabled operating system would come in the same year with Windows NT. On Sunday, July 14 2013, with a wink, Linus Torvalds released the first version of the newest Linux kernel, 3.11: Linux for Workgroups.

Now, with a new logo sporting Tux, the Linux penguin, holding a flag that's remindful of the old Windows 3.1 logo, Linux 3.11 is ready for testers. This is far from the first time that Torvalds has given early builds of the Linux kernel whimsical nicknames. Earlier ones have included "Unicycling Gorilla, "Holy Dancing Manatees, Batman," and "Jeff Thinks I Should Change This, But To What?"

On a more serious note, Torvalds announced a variety of small changes in 3.11.

Most of these come from AMD and amount to better support for the Radeon graphics card family. This will include a new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver.

Intel was also represented with improvements for the Haswell processor line. It also includes better support for Intel's Valley View Atom processor and Bay Trail, its Atom system-on-a-chip design .

In addition, Xen and KVM virtualization will work on 64-bit ARM architectures with 3.11. The kernel will also include a Lustre-distributed file system client. Lustre tends to be used in cluster-computing.

Finally, zswap is a lightweight compressed memory cache for swap pages. Its purpose is to improve performance when a Linux system is in danger of running out of memory.

Last, but not least, Torvalds has not given any hints about any future version of Linux being entitled "Linux XP."

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