Linux 3.0 Kernel – What’s New?
Twenty years after the Linux kernel was first released and eight years after Linux 2.6 arrived, we have arrived at Linux 3.0. What’s new in the latest kernel?
The biggest news in Linux 3.0 is actually the change of the version number itself. Linus Torvalds announced no major changes to Linux 2.6. The change was partly to celebrate Linux 20th anniversary and partly because 2.6.40 was an unacceptably high number, according to Torvalds.
At any rate, now t Linux 3.0 is out, but it is not completely devoid of news. The Xen virtualization engine should now be fully integrated in the Linux kernel instead of as previously deployed as a completely separate fix. This makes it much easier for system administrators to choose between Xen and its rival Kvm. Kvm has been distributed with the Linux kernel since version 2.6.20, which came out 2007.
The btrfs file system (better file system) is also seeing more improvements. Among other things, btrfs offers support for automatic defragmentation. The fall version of Fedora (16) is planning to use btrfs as standard which ensures that the file system will find its way into Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the long run. Btrfs is in RHEL today but is still classed as experimental.
With the Linux 3.0 release Linux for real-time systems takes a giant step forward. Real-time Linux, as before Xen, is a separate project that delivers a software fix which must be applied retroactively. Real-time Linux has previously built code adapted for Linux 2.6.33, but will now step forward to Linux 3.0. Real-time Linux is used in the deterministic system in which an operation must be guaranteed to be performed within a certain period. Systems using Real-time Linux has lower average performance than standard Linux, but performance is on the other hand, very smooth with no periods of slow response times.
One of the biggest contributors to Linux 3.0 is unexpectedly Microsoft, which takes a fifth place in the number of changes contributed. Microsoft is only surpassed by Red Hat, Intel, Novell and IBM. Microsoft’s contribution is to upgrade the Linux kernel for Microsoft’s virtualization engine Hyper-V. Linux 3.0 will eventually find its way into all the major popular Linux distributions such as the upcoming versions of Ubuntu and Fedora.
