Linux 6.17 Now Makes Multi-Core/SMP Support Unconditional
30 July 2025 - Always SMP

Earlier this year Linux kernel patches were posted for making SMP support unconditional so the kernel is always built for multi-core capabilities. With uniprocessor core environments being extremely rare especially for those that would be using an up-to-date, upstream Linux kernel, dropping non-SMP support would allow simplifying code paths within the kernel. Well, for Linux 6.17 it's finally happening.

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Linux's Lockdown LSM Back To Being Maintained For Restricted Computing
31 July 2025 - Linux Lockdown

Upstreamed to the Linux kernel back in 2019 was the Lockdown security module for opt-in hardware/kernel security restrictions. It was a difficult and contentious process getting to the Linux kernel but then was left without any formal maintainer shortly after being mainlined. Now for helping to renew this Linux security module, two developers have stepped up to takeover maintainership of Lockdown.

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Deferred Unwinder Code Upstreamed For Linux 6.17 On Road To SFrame Support
1 August 2025 - Deferred Unwinder

Linus Torvalds today merged the initial deferred unwinder infrastructure into the Linux 6.17 kernel on the path toward enabling SFrame stack trace format support.

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Linux 6.17 Memory Management Optimizations, DAMON_STAT & Other Improvements
2 August 2025 - Linux 6.17

All of the memory management "MM" changes were merged this week for the ongoing Linux 6.17 merge window.

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Intel QuickAssist Hit By Second Demotion In Linux 6.17 Due To Lack Of Kernel Benefit
3 August 2025 - Intel QuickAssist

A few days ago the Intel QuickAssist "QAT" accelerators were demoted by FSCRYPT in the Linux 6.17 development code due to being slow and bug prone with AVX-512 showing to be much faster than leveraging the QAT accelerators in this file encryption framework. With the Linux 6.17 crypto subsystem is a second separate demotion to Intel's QAT support for kernel use.

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Linux 6.17 Making Kdump Crash Kernel More Reliable, Less Wasted Memory
4 August 2025 - Linux 6.17 Kdump

In addition to the many MM changes merged this weekend for Linux 6.17, Andrew Morton on Sunday also sent out his "non-MM" pull request for this new kernel. Notable there is improving the Kdump code to allow for crash kernel reservation made from the contiguous memory allocator to help yield less wasted RAM and greater reliability.

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Linux 6.17 Introduces hash_pointers= Boot Parameter
5 August 2025 - hash_pointers

Linus Torvalds yesterday merged a patch from SUSE's Petr Mladek introducing a new boot parameter option for the kernel to provide greater control over the behavior of hashing pointer values.

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GTK3 Version Of gconfig Merged For Linux 6.17
6 August 2025 - Linux 6.17 Kbuild

All of the Kbuild changes were merged today for the Linux 6.17 kernel. Most notable with the Kbuild changes is the gconfig graphical utility for configuring the Linux kernel configuration now being ported from GTK2 to GTK3.

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Linux 6.17 Fixes A Performance Bottleneck In The Futex Code
6 August 2025 - FUTEX

Merged last week for Linux 6.17 were the FUTEX locking changes that include addressing an observed performance bottleneck.

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Linus Torvalds Rejects RISC-V Changes For Linux 6.17: "Garbage"
9 August 2025 - Linux 6.17 + RISC-V

Linus Torvalds has used his authority to reject the RISC-V architecture changes for the Linux 6.17 kernel. The RISC-V updates won't land this cycle and will need to try again for v6.18 later in the year. Linus refers to at least some of the proposed RISC-V code as garbage along with being submitted rather late during the merge window.

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Linux 6.17 EFI Stub Will Try To Maintain a Cleaner Boot Experience
9 August 2025 - Less Debug Fluff

The EFI code updates were merged today for the nearly-over Linux 6.17 kernel with two changes worth mentioning.

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Linux 6.17-rc1 Released With Many New Features But No Bcachefs Changes
10 August 2025 - Linux 6.17-rc1

Linus Torvalds just released the Linux 6.17-rc1 kernel a few hours ahead of his typical release regiment due to currently being in Europe. That marks the end of the Linux 6.17 merge window with many exciting changes merged this cycle. This is notable with Linux 6.17 expected to power Ubuntu 25.10 and other late 2025 Linux distribution releases.

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Linux Cache-Aware Scheduling / Load Balancing Updated With New Tuning Knob
11 August 2025 - Cache Aware Load Balancing

Intel engineer Chen Yu posted a fresh round of Linux kernel patches working on cache-aware scheduling/load-balancing for this functionality being sought after both by Intel and AMD. The new patches should address some performance regressions observed in the prior patches.

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Early Linux 6.17 Tests Show Some AMD Strix Halo Performance Improvements & Regressions
11 August 2025 - Linux 6.17 Benchmarks

Even prior to the Linux 6.17-rc1 release on Sunday I already had kicked off some Linux 6.17 Git benchmarking in being eager to see how the performance is beginning to shape up for this next kernel release that is set to power the likes of Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43. There is some good news and bad news with my early testing on the ZBook Ultra G1a for AMD Strix Halo.

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Google Develops KFuzzTest For Fuzzing Internal Linux Kernel Functions
13 August 2025 - KFuzzTest

Google engineers today introduced KFuzzTest as a new lightweight framework for in-kernel fuzz targets for internal kernel functions. KFuzzTest aims to make it easier to exercise Linux kernel code paths that are difficult to do from the system call boundary.

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Linux Lands Fix For Early 6.17 Regression Causing 37~43% Performance Hit
13 August 2025 - Whoops

Back during the Linux 6.17 merge window was an optimization geared for ARM64 that could have a "16x reduction" in the number of calls. Unfortunately that commit ended up causing a rather significant regression for some systems that has now been addressed.

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Linux 6.17 Performance Looking Even Better After Early Fallout Addressed
17 August 2025 - Linux 6.17 Benchmarks

Last week I ran some early Linux 6.17 benchmarks showing some improvements and regressions when testing with AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo". Since then there have been some performance regression fixes along with addressing other early fallout from this fresh kernel code. Repeating the tests now on the latest Linux 6.17 Git state ahead of today's Linux 6.17-rc2 tagging is showing some nice improvements and fixes from the code churn this week.

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Linux 6.17-rc2 Released With Performance Fixes & More
17 August 2025 - Linux 6.17

Linux 6.17-rc2 is now available to facilitate the latest weekly testing of the Linux 6.17 kernel.

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New Linux Patches Allow Manipulating Out-Of-Memory Behavior Using BPF
18 August 2025 - Linux OOM + BPF

Google engineer Roman Gushchin has proposed the ability for the Linux kernel to customize the out-of-memory "OOM" behavior using BPF programs.

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Kernel Stack Watch Proposed As New Linux Debugging Tool
19 August 2025 - Kernel Stack Watch

Patches were posted on Monday for Kernel Stack Watch, a new lightweight debugging tool for detecting kernel stack corruption in real-time on Linux.

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