The following is a brief scan of major new features based on Jonathan Corbet's "Linux Weather Forecast" of RC6, as well as the usual in-depth kernel rundown offered by Thorsten Leemhuis in The H, and the Kernel Newbies page (see links at end of the story).
Key features offered in Linux 2.6.35 include:
- Network scalability improvements with new receive packet- and receive-flow steering mechanisms added to the networking subsystem based on Google's Receive Packet Steering (RPS) and Receive Flow Steering (RFS)
- Network code and turbo-mode optimizations for multicore processors,
- Working memory defragmention enhancements with memory compaction patch set, improving support for large memory allocations
- Cpuidle menu governor enhanced with idle pattern detection for improved sleep-state selection based on recent system history
- Addition of basic direct I/O support to Btrfs file-system, plus fix for "storage space reaching capacity" glitch
- Support for the power saving mechanisms of AMD Radeon graphics chips
- Improvements to H.264, VC1, and 'perf' video acceleration in Intel G45+ processors
- Support for the future Intel Cougarpoint graphic chip
- New experimental journal mode for XFS
- KDB debugger UI based on KGDB
- Tunneling Protocol version 3 (RFC 3931) support
- Support for multiple multicast route tables
- CAIF protocol (ST-Ericsson) support
- ACPI Platform Error Interface support
- Tracing interfaces for the KVM hypervisor
