Linux 6.12 arrives with the RT kernel included and this list of new features

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Linux 6.12

After the usual seven Release Candidates, the stable version of the .NET Framework was expected to arrive on Sunday, November 17. Linux 6.12. There were no surprises. Linus Torvalds announced it a few hours ago. What's new? Lots, as always, although this time there are really important improvements, such as the inclusion of RT in the official kernel, so it is no longer necessary to use a special one to perform tasks that require a core with less delay.

On the other hand, Torvalds has not said it, it is not up to him, but it is more than likely that Linux 6.12 is the LTS version of 2024. The one from 2023 was Linux 6.6, which arrived in October last year, and 6.12 should be the 2024 extended support release because there hasn't been one this year and the calendar doesn't allow for more. What comes next is the list with news Linux 6.12.

What's New in Linux 6.12

Processors:

  • Real-time PREEMPT_RT support has finally been integrated. After two decades of waiting, the mainline Linux 6.12 kernel now supports PREEMPT_RT builds for x86/x86_64, RISC-V and ARM64.
  • Linux 6.12 has finalized Intel's preparations to leave the Family 6 era behind.
  • Intel Efficiency Latency Control (ELC) functionality for its uncore in SoCs.
  • Intel IFS SBAF core tests have been merged to expand In-Field Scan capabilities.
  • Intel Panther Lake and Diamond Rapids model identifiers are added. Panther Lake also has initial support for the Intel LPSS driver.
  • LoongArch now supports ACPI BGRT and other features.
  • More kernel features and new CPU ISA extensions for RISC-V.
  • Linus Torvalds himself has worked on fast user access validation through address masking.
  • Intel TPEBS and LBR event logging support with perf tools.
  • Performance updates for Intel Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake platforms.
  • Completion of EEVDF and other scheduler improvements.
  • Hybrid CPU capacity scaling support for the Intel P-State controller to help with Lunar Lake SoCs and other CPUs that will ship with P/E cores but lack SMT support.
  • Various power management updates from Intel and AMD.
  • Initial Raspberry Pi 5 support finally available for the mainline kernel.
  • Support for AMD Bus Lock Detect.
  • New support for Snapdragon X1 laptops with ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 and Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 hardware for these Qualcomm-powered laptops.
  • Support for Arm Permission Overlay Extension.

Graphics:

  • Intel graphics controller fan speed is now reported.
  • Intel Panther Lake HDMI audio support.
  • QR codes for DRM panic messages when experiencing a kernel error.
  • Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake and Battlemage graphics are enabled by default for out-of-the-box compatibility with already shipping Core Ultra 200 series laptops and upcoming discrete graphics cards.
  • The AMDGPU driver has finer grained restart handling, more RDNA4 workloads, process isolation support, and other features.

Storage / File Systems:

  • Bcachefs is working on removing its “experimental” flag hopefully next year.
  • Changes to XFS and VFS to finally support block sizes larger than the page size.
  • Idmapped mounts for FUSE and connected to VirtIO-FS.
  • LOCALIO protocol support to help increase NFS performance when the client and server are on the same system, such as in containers.
  • F2FS goes through more folio conversions.
  • 9p USB network controller gadget to help with the development of embedded devices as an alternative to using NFS.
  • Minor performance optimizations for Btrfs.
  • XFS adds new ioctls to swap the contents of two files.
  • The file structure is smaller, which can help with some heavy file workloads.
  • Support for IO_uring async discard to improve performance with this wonderful kernel innovation.
  • EROFS support for file-backed mounts.
  • NILFS2 filesystem fixes.

Networks:

  • The NVIDIA Mellanox driver has added Multi-Path PCI as a nice feature.
  • Device Memory TCP support has been merged.
  • Various other new wired and wireless networking hardware support. New hardware support includes support for the RTL8852BT and RTL8852BE-VT, RTL9054/RTL9068/RTL9072/RTL9075/RTL9068/RTL9071, Motorcomm yt8821 2.5G Ethernet PHY, RTL8126A Rev B, and others.
  • There is also a Rust driver for the QT2025 PHY.

Other hardware:

  • Merged native PCIe cage management to manage PCIe storage cage LED lights and blinking patterns.
  • Numerous laptop compatibility improvements benefiting laptops from Lenovo, ASUS, Dell, LG, Panasonic, and others.
  • Various improvements to hardware monitoring with HWMON drivers, such as support for more AYANEO and OneXPlayer handheld gaming devices.
  • More CXL additions.
  • PixArt PS/2 touchpad controller found on some laptop computers.
  • An HDMI CEC controller for high-end 4K HDMI splitters/amplifiers.
  • More IEEE-1394 Firewire improvements.
  • New features of Wacom drawing tablet driver.
  • Improved ASUS ROG Ally X audio support.
  • EDAC address translation for upcoming AMD platforms.
  • Legacy Intel sound drivers have been removed in favor of new AVS code.
  • Many ACPI updates.
  • Improved support for QNAP TS-433 NAS.

Virtualization:

  • Improved VirtIO Vsock performance.
  • KVM virtualization can now advertise AVX10.1 support to guest virtual machines.
  • Microsoft Hyper-V will boot Linux faster when it has many CPU cores.
  • KVM LoongArch to accelerate ARM/x86 binary translation.
  • ARM/RISC-V/LoongArch KVM Updates.

Linux Security:

  • The LSM Landlock has more controls around Unix sockets.
  • vDSO getrandom() for five more CPU architectures.
  • Greater compile-time control over CPU security mitigations.
  • The new Integrity Policy Enforcement «IPE» security module.
  • Replay Protected Memory Block “RPMB” subsystem introduced after years of rumors.

Other kernel changes with Linux 6.12:

  • Sched_ext allows you to manage kernel scheduling policies via eBPF programs. Sched_ext has been a long time in the making and is one of the big features of Linux 6.12.
  • Updated XZ embed code.
  • A kernel stack usage histogram has been added to help developers with optimizations.
  • Easier building of Pacman debugging kernels for Arch Linux.
  • The Rust framework on Linux 6.12 is prepared for the Rust binder and now supports more CPU sanitizers and mitigations.

Now available

Linux 6.12 has been announced and is now available for download. Its arrival to the different Linux distributions will depend on the philosophy and development model of each one.