Linus Torvalds has announced the first Release Candidate (RC) for Linux kernel 6.14, marking the beginning of public testing. This release comes two weeks after the debut of the Linux 6.13 kernel and the opening of Linux 6.14’s merge window.
This milestone sets in motion the rapid development cadence leading up to the stable release, which is expected in roughly two months. Torvalds invites users and developers to test the RCs and report any issues to ensure a smooth final rollout. But before diving into testing, let’s examine the standout features and enhancements in Linux 6.14.
Among the headline changes are support for amd-pstate preferred core rankings, a new cgroup controller for device memory, and a new accelerator driver for AMD’s XDNA Ryzen AI NPUs. The update also improves the AMDGPU driver with DRM panic support, introduces Intel Clearwater Forest server compatibility, and adds enhanced SELinux permissions and core energy counter support for AMD CPUs. Power supply extensions now allow additional properties to be assigned from separate drivers, and support has been added for T-Head vector extensions for RISC-V CPUs.
Furthermore, the series marks a milestone in building the kernel using Rust.
In the pull request, Rust for Linux lead developer Miguel Ojeda said: “This is a major milestone on the path to build the kernel using only stable Rust features. In particular, previously we were using the unstable features ‘coerce_unsized’, ‘dispatch_from_dyn’ and ‘unsize’, and now we will use the new ‘derive_coerce_pointee’ one, which is on track to stabilization.
“This new feature [uses ‘derive(CoercePointee)’ on Rust >= 1.84.0] is a macro that essentially expands into code that internally uses the unstable features that we were using before, without having to expose those.”
Linux 6.14 introduces several hardware-focused enhancements. Highlights include KVM hypercall service support for usermode virtual machine managers on LoongArch CPUs, a new PCI error recovery status mechanism for IBM System/390, and PM suspend/resume support for Raspberry Pi devices. Dell XPS 9370 laptops gain manual fan control, while SoundWire devices benefit from deferred read/write functionality and broader MBQ access sizes.
Expanded compatibility extends to controllers and interfaces. New drivers enable support for SM8750 platforms, MT8188 Mali-G57 MC3 GPUs in the Panfrost driver, Loongson SoC EDAC chipsets, and the Intel Touch host controller. Wacom PCI devices, SteelSeries Arctis 9 gaming headsets, and ASUS TUF GAMING X670E PLUS motherboards also enter the Linux fold with this release.
For power users, Linux 6.14 debuts features like Intel Xeon “Clearwater Forest” processor support, a cpufreq driver for Airoha SoCs, and filtering support for NVIDIA NVLINK-C2C Coresight PMUs. Gamers will be pleased to find Nacon Evol-X and Pro Compact Xbox One controllers added, as well as unofficial Xbox 360 wireless receiver clones.
Networking capabilities receive a boost in Linux 6.14. IPsec now supports IP-TFS/AggFrag encapsulation for inner-IP aggregation and fragmentation. RxRPC sockets enable jumbo data packet transmission, while phylib adds support for in-band capabilities negotiation. Other enhancements include a unified interface for reporting PHY statistics, netlink notifications for multicast IP address changes, and improvements for IPv4-mapped IPv6 clients in smc-r v2.
As system stability and reliability remain paramount, Linux 6.14 offers a new feature that reduces transition durations for system suspend and resume on select machines—an improvement that should delight both developers and end users.
Broad support for audio, storage, and SoCs also features prominently in this release. ALSA APIs gain upgrades for MIDI 2.0 compatibility, while notable audio advancements include support for Focusrite Scarlett 4th Gen interfaces (16i16, 18i16, and 18i20) and Realtek ALC5682I-VE sound chips.
The kernel also adds support for Blaize BLZP1600 and SpacemiT K1 SoCs, large folios for tmpfs, compress-offload API extensions for ASRC, and restartable sequences for OpenRISC. NFS gets particular attention with version 4.2+ gaining attribute delegation and version 4.1 supporting dynamic session slot table resizing. These improvements are rounded out by enhanced support for Snapdragon X CPUs.
Phew! With the release of the first RC, the Linux community will now enter a rigorous testing phase, with RCs leading up to the stable release in around two months. This timeline gives contributors sufficient opportunity to uncover and address any lingering issues.
(Photo by Gabriel Heinzer)
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