Linux 2.6.30 is currently in development. The release candidate -rc1 was released the 7 April 2009, closing the merge window.

This page is, obviously, a work in progress.

Summary:

TableOfContents()

1. Prominent features (the cool stuff)

1.1. NILFS2 log-structured filesystem

[http://www.nilfs.org NILFS2] (new implementation of a log-structured file system 2) is a log-structured filesystem, which allows continuous snapshotting.

1.2. Support for Object-Based Storage Device

Object-Based Storage Device (OSD) are basically "smart" disks, which do not store the data as blocks, but more elaborated objects. 2.6.30 adds support to these devices in the SCSI layer, as well as the addition of a filesystem (exofs, Extended Object File System) able to use them.

([http://lwn.net/Articles/305740/ LWN's Article], where exofs is still known by its old name, osdfs)

1.3. Local Filesystem Caching Infrastructure

FS-Cache is an infrastructure to locally cache remote (or slow) filesystems. It is described in more details in [http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/filesystems/caching/fscache.txt].

1.4. Filesystems performance improvement

Shortly after the 2.6.29 release, lots of discussions occurred on LKML about disk I/O (summary available [http://lwn.net/Articles/326471/ at LWN]), and how (and why) they can stall processes for minutes. Some measure have been taken to limit this, like setting the default mount-option to relatime, with 24 hours refresh time ([http://valhenson.livejournal.com/36519.html Detailed article in Valerie Aurora's blog]), and imporving fsync() for ext3.

1.5. Integrity Management Architecture

This is an infrastructure which use the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to check that the OS has not been tampered with. ([LWN's article http://lwn.net/Articles/227937/])

2. Various core changes

• Scheduler
• Memory management

3. Wi-Fi

4. Security

• Integrity Management Architecture has been merged.

5. Networking

6. Tracing

7. Filesystems

• ReiserFS
  • Lots of clean-ups.
• Ext3
  • fsync() improvements.
• AFS
  • Now makes use of the FSCache infrastructure.
• NFS
  • Now makes use of the FSCache infrastructure.
• btrfs
  • Stack usage improvements.
• NILFS2
  • The filesystem has been merged for this release. (see above)
• exofs
  • The filesystem has been merged for this release.(see above)

8. Crypto

9. DM/MD

10. Virtualization

11. Architecture-specific changes

• X86
• ARM
• PPC
• SH
• S390
• Blackfin
• MIPS
• SPARC
• AVR32

12. Drivers

12.1. Storage

• SATA:
• IDE
• SCSI
  • Add OSD support. (see above)

12.2. Graphics

12.3. Network

12.4. Input

12.5. Sound

12.6. V4L/DVB

12.7. USB

12.8. HWMON

12.9. Watchdog

12.10. RTC

12.11. HID

12.12. MTD

12.13. MFD

12.14. Power

12.15. Serial

12.16. Various

13. Other sources about 2.6.30 kernel

• Heise Online's Kernel Log :

  • [http://www.h-online.com/open/Kernel-Log-Linux-2-6-30-is-taking-shape--/news/113036 Linux 2.6.30 is taking shape]

• Linux Weekly news :

  • [http://lwn.net/Articles/325921/ 2.6.30 merge window, part I]

• CategoryReleases