The purpose of this page is tracking and explaining the features added in every release, just like the [http://wiki.dragonflybsd.org/index.php/DragonFly_Status Dragonfly people did].

It'd be nice if kernel hackers would spend some minutes adding their stuff here. The one place where you can find a comparable changelog are the fabulous LWN kernel articles: http://lwn.net/Kernel/, or the [http://lwn.net/Articles/driver-porting/ driver porting guide] - but there's no reason why the kernel community shouldn't embrace and extend those efforts

TODO:

• Import [http://kernelnewbies.org/status/latest.html Kernelnewbies status] list (2.5.57 - 2.6.0-test9 done)

• Import relevant data from [http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/post-halloween-2.5.txt davej's post halloween document]

• Keep track of what gets changed

2.6.14:

2.6.13:

• x86 now uses the generic PCI bus setup code for assigning unassigned resources

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/104343/ inotify]

• Support for the Xtensa architecture: [http://www.tensilica.com/products/xtensa_architecture.htm 32-bit architecture] used in embedded devices

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/108595/ kexec and kdump]: Kexec allows users to load a new kernel from another running kernel. By preserving the memory contents in a crash scenario, kexec allows to implement kdump. Kdump is able to get a memory dump of the previous kernel, and be used as a debugging tool.

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/135472/ Execute-in-place support]: Traditionally, programs are loaded from disk to memory to be executed. However, the current wave of embedded devices store programs in a ROM/flash chip. XIP allows the kernel executing programs directly from that ROM, without being copied to RAM (saving RAM space), and bypassing the page cache/io scheduler layers (since they're not needed).

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/145973/ build-time configurable clock interrupt frequency]:

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/143474/ Improved CFQ IO scheduler]

• Voluntary preemption patches
• Removal of the devfs configuration option

2.6.12:

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/140164/ API changes]

• New driver for the "trusted computing" (TPM) crap^Wchip

• [http://www.superh.com/products/shyway.htm SuperHyway bus support]

• Multilevel security implementation for SELinux

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/124703/ device mapper multipath support]

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/121845/ Address space randomization]

• Restore the Philips webcam driver
• I/O barrier support for serial ATA drives

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/134460/ "resource limits"]

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/127936/ cpusets]

• Remove IPV6 "experimental" status

2.6.11:

2.6.10:

2.6.9:

2.6.8:

2.6.7:

2.6.6:

2.6.5:

2.6.4:

2.6.3:

2.6.2:

2.6.1:

2.6.0:

2.6.0-test9:

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/44243/ libata driver architecture] (Jeff Garzik)

2.6.0-test6:

• [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=104344596912094&w=2 32-bit dev_t] (Andries Brouwer, Al Viro)

2.6.0-test3:

• [http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/index.html SELinux] (Stephen Smalley, SELinux team)

2.6.0-test1:

• [http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/ Linux Virtual Server layer] (Wensong Zhang)

2.5.75:

• [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-mm&m=104529418208788&w=2 Anticipatory Scheduler] (Nick Piggin, Andrew Morton)

2.5.71:

• [http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=104981044405395&w=2 Switch the IDE I/O layers to taskfile](Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz, Alan Cox)

2.5.70:

• [http://www.linux-usb.org/gadget USB gadget support] (David Brownell, Stuart Lynne, Greg Kroah-Hartman)

2.5.69:

• [http://lwn.net/Articles/29555/ New interrupt handling API] (Linus Torvalds, Andrew Morton, etc.)

2.5.65:

• [http://www.kerneltrap.org/node.php?id=603 Desktop Interactivity Improvements] (Linus Torvalds, Ingo Molnar)

2.5.63:

• [http://high-res-timers.sourceforge.net/ POSIX timers] (George Anzinger)

2.5.60:

• New modversions implementation (Kai Germaschewski)
• 64-bit jiffies (Tim Schmielau)

2.5.59:

• [http://home.arcor.de/efocht/sched/ NUMA aware scheduler extensions] (Erich Focht, Michael Hohnbaum, Martin Bligh)

2.5.57:

• [http://www.zipworld.com.au/~akpm/linux/schedlat.html Remove long-held locks for low scheduling latency] (Andrew Morton, etc.)

2.5.54:

• [http://secure.netroedge.com/~lm78/ Add drivers for hardware health monitoring] (lm_sensors team)