Linux 3.2 Now Available

News
By Douglas Perry
published

Linus Torvalds officially released the Linux kernel 3.2.

 "I delayed 3.2 first a few days to wait for the final linux-next ("final" in the sense that that's what I'll fetch to decide whether something has been in linux-next for 3.3 or not), and then some more as people were coming back from holidays and sorting out some regressions," Torvalds wrote in the announcement.

"So we do have a few last-minute reverts and small fixes. Still, there's not a whole lot of changes since -rc7 (shortlog appended), and almost all of them are *tiny*. So despite the few annoying last-minute reverts, I'm feeling pretty happy about it," he wrote.

Among the new features are support for the power saving technology RC6 for Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs, which now also covers the graphics unit of the processors. The Nouveau driver adds acceleration support Nvidia's Fermi chips, including NVC1, NVC8 and NVCF GPUs. The TCP stack received support for proportional rate reduction (PRR), the Ext4 file system supports big allocation blocks and the experimental Btrfs has been patched. Additionally, the developers added drivers for two new WLAN chips, Broadcom's Brcm80211 and Atheros' AR6003.

Douglas Perry
16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • datawrecker
    WINNING
    Reply
  • g4114rd0
      - Spheniscus magellanicus, Penguins feathers are short but...

    +1 added drivers for new WLAN chips
    Reply
  • cryogenic
    g4114rd0  - Spheniscus magellanicus, Penguins feathers are short but...+1 added drivers for new WLAN chips
    Yea but the video drivers still suck! When will those get fixed?

    P.S. Yeah, yeah I know the hardware manufacturers fault, bla bla, Microsoft monopoly bla bla, they've gotten better but still suck bla bla.
    I don't care! Just fix them, the community, the companies, Santa Claus, whoever is up for the task. I'm sick of it already!


    Reply
  • freggo
    Nice to see that Linux does not -yet- feel the need to go crazy with the version numbers.
    Reply
  • phatboe
    Will Btfs ever go stable?
    Reply
  • chibiwings
    Im into CLI anyway.
    Reply
  • nevertell
    But the new graphics modules break intel IOMMU support.
    This isn't all that big of a deal, if you know what VT-d is and where it is applied, but I imagine that people who will try it out and get a kernel panic when trying to boot will be pretty pissed. You don't need VT-d if you don't need virtualized guest OS's direct access to peripheral hardware.

    And I don't know if you have checked or not, but the latest open source nouveau and Rxxx drivers have made huge progress towards everyday usability. Some radeon drivers are even faster than the closed source counter parts, nouveau is working towards no-nonsense power management. They are maturing, even if at a miserably slow pace.
    Reply
  • notsleep
    ...and all of three people rejoice...is he getting fatter as he's growing older? put down the fork, torvalds! that third chin is starting to show! :P
    Reply
  • memadmax
    Sweet. But however... This guy thinks too much lol
    Reply
  • randomizer
    CryogenicYea but the video drivers still suck! When will those get fixed?P.S. Yeah, yeah I know the hardware manufacturers fault, bla bla, Microsoft monopoly bla bla, they've gotten better but still suck bla bla. I don't care! Just fix them, the community, the companies, Santa Claus, whoever is up for the task. I'm sick of it already!Why don't use fix them? Oh, you have a busy lifestyle, programming is not for you, it's the government's job... better to just complain about it, understandable.
    Reply