Linux 6.12 Features Are Super Exciting With Real-Time, Sched_ext, Intel Xe2 & Raspberry Pi 5

The Linux 6.12 merge window is wrapping up today with the release of Linux 6.12-rc1 in the coming hours. This is going to be a heck of an exciting kernel. There’s real-time PREEMPT_RT finally in mainline, the much anticipated sched_ext code also was merged, QR codes for DRM panic messages, initial out-of-the-box support for Intel Xe2 graphics with Lunar Lake and Battlemage, initial Raspberry Pi 5 support, and a ton of other hardware support additions and new innovative kernel software features.

Linux 6.12 is destined to be one of the biggest kernel feature releases in likely some years. Linux 6.12 is bringing PREEMPT_RT for mainline real-time kernel support! Sched_ext was merged for allowing this new scheduling class and scheduling policies to be implemented via BPF programs. QR codes for DRM panic messages was merged in Linux 6.12 as another interesting innovation. The QR code error messages is written in the Rust programming language.

Intel Xe2 graphics with Core Ultra 200 Series “Lunar Lake” and upcoming Battlemage discrete GPUs are enabled by default with Linux 6.12. Some other interesting Linux 6.12 features include LOCALIO support for NFS to deliver an “extreme” performance boost, Multi-Path PCI for the NVIDIA Mellanox driver, VFS+XFS changes to support block sizes larger than the page size, Device Memory TCP support is introduced, IO_uring async discard, and initial Raspberry Pi 5 support.

Below is a more exhaustive list of the Linux 6.12 kernel changes that I have been monitoring. Linux 6.12-rc1 will be out later today and then it’s onto more Linux 6.12 kernel testing and performance benchmarking.

Making Linux 6.12 all the more exciting is that Linux 6.12 is expected to be this year’s Long Term Support (LTS) kernel version. Linux 6.12 stable should be out in mid to late November.

Processors:

– Real-time PREEMPT_RT support was finally mainlined! Two decades in the making, the mainline Linux 6.12 kernel supports PREEMPT_RT builds for x86/x86_64, RISC-V, and ARM64 at the moment. It’s finally happened with mainline real-time support!

– Linux 6.12 has finished the Intel preparations for moving past the Family 6 era.

– Intel Efficiency Latency Control (ELC) functionality for their uncore on SoCs.

– Intel IFS SBAF core testing was merged to expand the In-Field Scan capabilities.

– Intel Panther Lake and Diamond Rapids model IDs are added. Panther Lake also has initial Intel LPSS driver support.

– LoongArch now supports ACPI BGRT and other features.

– More kernel features and new CPU ISA extensions for RISC-V.

– User-access fast validation via address masking was worked on by Linus Torvalds himself.

– Intel TPEBS and LBR event logging support with perf tools.

– Perf updates for Intel Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake platforms.

– Completing EEVDF and other scheduler improvements.

– Hybrid CPU capacity scaling support for the Intel P-State driver to help with Lunar Lake SoCs and other CPUs to come with P/E cores but lacking SMT support.

– Various Intel and AMD power management updates.

– Initial Raspberry Pi 5 support at long last for the mainline kernel.

– AMD Bus Lock Detect support.

– New Snapdragon X1 laptop support with the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 and Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 hardware for these Qualcomm powered laptops. But various feature limitations remain.

– Arm Permission Overlay Extension support.

Graphics:

– Intel graphics driver fan speed reporting at long last…

– 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 support with the Core Ultra 200 series laptops now shipping and upcoming discrete graphics cards.

– The AMDGPU driver has more fine-grained reset handling, more RDNA4 work, process isolation support, and other features.