Redazione RHC : 30 July 2025 15:16
Last weekend the final version of the Linux kernel 6.16 was released, traditionally announced by Linus Torvalds himself. Development proceeded calmly, but without any major innovations: the release proved more technical than sensational. Nevertheless, it includes dozens of performance improvements, support for new instructions, and fundamental improvements in memory usage.
According to Phoronix, Linux 6.16 now contains over 38 million lines of code, spread across over 78,000 files. A lot of work has been done, from low-level optimizations to security improvements. One of the most notable changes is the addition of support for Intel’s Advanced Performance Extensions, introduced in 2023. These expand vector operations and double the number of general-purpose registers, but they don’t work on all processors, reminiscent of Intel’s issues with media fragmentation.
File systems have also received a performance boost. XFS has added extended atomic writes, while ext4 has gained support for bigalloc and large folio, which in some scenarios speeds up operations by nearly a third. Improvements have affected both Btrfs and NFS. The core dump mechanism has also been changed: memory dumps can now be transmitted via AF_SOCKET, instead of just being saved to a directory. This increases flexibility and safety when debugging.
For NUMA server systems, the automatic self-optimization feature has been added, an important feature for distributing load across memory nodes. Additionally, the kernel now supports five-level page tables, paving the way for colossal amounts of virtual memory. For resource-constrained embedded solutions and devices, an important innovation is the ability to delegate audio decoding to USB chips, which has been under development for several years and is finally implemented, especially for Qualcomm platforms.
A complete overview of the innovations is published in two parts at LWN: Part One, Part Two and un Summary. A brief description is also available on kernelnewbies.org, for those who want to quickly familiarize themselves with the main points.
Torvalds warned that he would be traveling during the Linux 6.17 release. This could cause delays. This seems like an organizational warning, but it also reminds us that the fate of the Linux kernel still largely depends on a single person.
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