Linux 3.3 Kernel Released Officially; Android Support Included
After a week delay due to ârc7 release, Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds has finally released the Linux 3.3 kernel. This release is important as it also features the merging of kernel code from Android project. In the <a href="https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/18/132" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">LKML: Linus Torvalds: Linux 3.3 release</a>, Linus said that the changes are in various subsystems including drivers, file systems, networking, pref tools etc.
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One of the most distinguished changes in the new kernel is merging the code with Android project. After years of disagreement the developers from both projects have finally agreed to merge the codes. The balancing operation in Brtfs has also been improved. It is also possible now to restripe between different RAID levels. It also has a new debugging utility named âintegrity checkâ, which is mainly designed to help developers. A new multilayer switch Open vSwitch is implemented to be used in virtualized server environment. A new teaming, networking device will allow the users to create virtual interfaces. These virtual interfaces can team together multiple Ethernet devices which will help to increase the maximum bandwidth and provide redundancy.
Per âcgroup TCP buffer limit will help in memory pressure control. It will put the limit to the size of the buffer in TCP transmission. A new network priority control group will give the right to administrators to assign the dynamic priority to different network traffics. There is a new online resizing ioctl which will allow kernel to allocate bitmaps and inode tables. The new Linux kernel has the new architecture support for Texas Instrument C6X. It will support the members of C64x single and multicore DSPs (Digital Signal Processors). It also has new EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) boot stub which will allow x86 bzImage to be loaded and executed directly by EFI firmware.
There are a lot of other changes in Driver and Architecture, core kernel, file system management, networking, security etc. The full change log can be found <a href="https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.3" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Linux_3.3 - Linux Kernel Newbies</a>.