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:
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]