Linux 7.1-rc2 Released With Audio Fix For Steam Deck OLED, Other Fixes
Linux 7.1-rc2 is out for testing with its accumulation of initial bug and regression fixes that have been collected over the past week since the Linux 7.1 merge window was capped off.
With Linux 7.1-rc2 some of the changes that crossed my radar include an audio fix for the Steam Deck OLED after the mainline kernel had broken audio support for the Steam Deck OLED handheld the past two years (Valve's downstream kernel was carrying its own patch/workaround as were other handheld-focused distributions). With Linux 7.1-rc2 there is also more fixes for the new NTFS file-system driver and more improvements/fixes for older AMD GPUs thanks to Valve's Timur Kristóf. There were also new Intel Xe driver Xe3P graphics workarounds/tuning and other fixes. Linux 7.1-rc2 also pulls in a number of sched_ext fixes following increased AI code review and fuzzing. Beyond that it was mostly the usual assortment of different small fixes throughout the kernel's codebase.
On with more testing of Linux 7.1-rc2 that is now available from kernel.org.
Update: Linus Torvalds is now out with his customary release announcement for Linux 7.1-rc2. He noted:
With Linux 7.1-rc2 some of the changes that crossed my radar include an audio fix for the Steam Deck OLED after the mainline kernel had broken audio support for the Steam Deck OLED handheld the past two years (Valve's downstream kernel was carrying its own patch/workaround as were other handheld-focused distributions). With Linux 7.1-rc2 there is also more fixes for the new NTFS file-system driver and more improvements/fixes for older AMD GPUs thanks to Valve's Timur Kristóf. There were also new Intel Xe driver Xe3P graphics workarounds/tuning and other fixes. Linux 7.1-rc2 also pulls in a number of sched_ext fixes following increased AI code review and fuzzing. Beyond that it was mostly the usual assortment of different small fixes throughout the kernel's codebase.
On with more testing of Linux 7.1-rc2 that is now available from kernel.org.
Update: Linus Torvalds is now out with his customary release announcement for Linux 7.1-rc2. He noted:
"I bring you tidings of another regular rc release - 7.1-rc2 is out, and looks fairly normal.
Now, the raw diffstat doesn't _look_ normal, with half of the diff being to the kvm selftests, but that's pretty much entirely due to just renaming in the selftests to have the same naming conventions as the kernel code has (wrt both variable and type names), so it all looks big and strange, but you should just ignore that oddity.
And when that part is masked out, the rest looks very normal - about half various driver fixes (gpu and networking dominating as usual), with the rest being spread all over the place.
It's not small, and while it's a bit early to say for sure, I do suspect we're seeing the same continued pattern of more patches than usual - probably due to AI tooling - that we saw in 7.0."