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Collabora reports today on their contributions to the latest Linux 5.8 kernel series, which is one of the biggest releases of all time according to Linus Torvalds. Collabora’s contributions to Linux kernel 5.8 would be its biggest yet too.
Linux kernel 5.8 was released over the weekend by Linus Torvalds, after almost two months in development, which kicked off as one of the biggest releases of all time. Now, the final release is here and it turns out it’a indeed a massive update to the Linux kernel.
Highlights include Shadow Call Stack and Branch Target Identification (BTI) support for ARM platforms, LZO-RLE compression for the F2FS file system, new boot parameter to specify the initial RAM disk image, inline encryption support in the block layer, and a new event-notification mechanism.
Additionally, Linux kernel 5.8 features Thunderbolt 4 support, Kernel Concurrency Sanitizer (KCSAN) dynamic data race detector for kernel space, support for multiple private instances in the /proc file system, and mitigations for the SRBDS/CrossTalk hardware vulnerability.
Collabora is known for their awesome contributions to the Linux kernel, and the work done during this cycle is their biggest and most significant yet, despite the pandemic created by COVID-19.
During the development of Linux kernel 5.8, Collabora’s kernel developers worked on improving the support for Rockchip SoCs used in some Chromebooks, laptops and development boards, especially around graphics and multimedia.
They added DRM AFBC (Arm Frame Buffer Compression) support for Rockchip SoCs to reduce the memory bandwidth used by compressing buffers sent to the display, and further improved the Rockchip Video Decoder driver (rkvdec) and RK3399 Camera ISP driver (rkisp1) with new features.
“While Collabora modestly contributed to this massive release, Linux 5.8 marks our biggest and most significant contributions yet,” said Dafna Hirschfeld. “Everyone at Collabora has been impressed by the efforts put together by our kernel developers.”
Other contributions include initial support for i.MX 6 boards in the armhf port of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system, support for JPEGs decoding with optimized Huffman tables in the Coda driver for i.MX 6 platforms, and documentation improvements to the printk function, which is used by kernel developers for logging, deadlock fixes on the SCSI subsystem.
They also improved the Smart Battery System (SBS) support on the power-supply subsystem, which should prolong the battery life on several Chroombook devices, and fixed a critical display issue with several Chromebooks powered by MediaTek SoCs, such Lenovo N23 Chromebook, Acer Chromebook R13, and Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook.
To see all of Collabora’s contributions to the Linux kernel 5.8 series, check out this blog post.
Image: Collabora
Last updated 4 years ago
