Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 5.14. In this post, we recap the updates and provide you the download/installation instructions.
Linux Kernel 5.14 introducing some major ARM updates and new hardware support across Network, Storage, Processor, Graphics, and Ports. Major updates include Core Scheduling, complete support for Raspberry Pi 400, Rockchip RK3568, Qualcomm SA8155p supports along with other SOC devices. Other than this, updates includes usual driver updates across the board.
So I realize you must all still be busy with all the galas and fancy
balls and all the other 30th anniversary events, but at some point you
must be getting tired of the constant glitz, the fireworks, and the
champagne. That ball gown or tailcoat isn’t the most comfortable
thing, either. The celebrations will go on for a few more weeks yet,
but you all may just need a breather from them.And when that happens, I have just the thing for you – a new kernel
release to test and enjoy. Because 5.14 is out there, just waiting for
you to kick the tires and remind yourself what all the festivities are
about.Of course, the poor tireless kernel maintainers won’t have time for
Linus
the festivities, because for them, this just means that the merge
window will start tomorrow. We have another 30 years to look forward
to, after all. But for the rest of you, take a breather, build a
kernel, test it out, and then you can go back to the seemingly endless
party that I’m sure you just crawled out of.
Let’s take a look at what’s new.
Table of Contents
Linux Kernel 5.14 – What’s New
Processor and Architecture Updates
Among the plethora of Arm hardware support changes to find with Linux 5.14 include:
- Raspberry Pi 400 can now work completely with this Kernel, thanks to the work done for the past couple of months.
- Rockchip RK3568 SoC support lands as well. Rockchip RK3568 chip is a high-range general-purpose SoC, made in 22nm process technology, integrated 4-core ARM architecture A55 processor and Mali G52 2EE graphics processor, supporting 4K decoding and 1080P encoding.
- Qualcomm SA8155p automotive platform support lands. Qualcomm SA8155p SOC provides high-performance automotive infotainment, advanced driver assist platform for developing, testing, optimizing and showcasing next-generation in-vehicle infotainment solutions.
- Initial support for the Sony Xperia 1/1II and 5/5II. These two models released a while back.
- The World’s Smallest AI Supercomputer for Embedded and Edge Systems – NVIDIA Tegra Jetson Xavier NX audio support is added.
- Various updates added for Qualcomm-powered Microsoft Surface Duo with SM8150 SoC.
- Updates to DIY BananaPi M5 board is added.
- The VirtIO-IOMMU driver now supported on x86/x86_64 architecture.
- The RISC-V architecture also gets some important updates in this release. That includes, KFENCE (Kernel Electric Fence for memory safety error detection/validation), generic resource mapping, and more.
Graphics
- More support for Intel Alder Lake P and Alder Lake M graphics cards.
- AMD Beige Goby GPU Support is also added. Beige Goby is the new RDNA2 graphics card from AMD.
- You can now hot-unplug AMD Raedon graphics cards with this Kernel release.
Storage
- Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) sees improvements which brings read-only feature.
- EXT4 file system received an important update. With the new code, a checkpoint can be triggered by a user, which calls ioctl to flush the journal. This can be accessible via user and can be beneficial for handling periodical journal cleanup.
Misc Updates
- A new system call ‘memfd_secret’ is introduced which provides a ‘secret’ memory area which is only visible to owning processes.
- Linux 5.14 has re-introduced support for improvements to lower the latency of its USB audio drivers. Managing audio via USB port would have lower latency – thanks to the support added. This has been tested with PipeWire, Jack and Pulse audio as well.
- More supports being added for USB4. We are seeing continuous code addition over a couple of releases for this new specification.
Download and Install
How to Install in Ubuntu
You can install the mainline kernel packages from the below link right now in your latest Ubuntu or Ubuntu-based Linux distributions. But it is not recommended installing this as it might break the current Ubuntu Linux system whichever you are running (e.g Ubuntu 20.04 LTS). If you are running Debian, Ubuntu, and other stable releases – do not upgrade using the below steps. Instead, wait for an official update via your Linux distribution.
For general users, unless you are keen to experiment with the latest hardware whose support is added in this release, you should not update at the moment.
If you still want to install the latest Linux Kernel 5.14, follow the below instructions to install in Ubuntu-based systems.
Visit the mainline kernel page.
There are two types of builds available – generic and lowlatency. For common systems, you can download generic builds that work most of the time. For audio recordings and other setups that require low latency, download the lowlatency one.
Download below four packages for generic via terminal and install.
cd /tmp
wget -c https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v5.14/amd64/linux-headers-5.14.0-051400-generic_5.14.0-051400.202108292331_amd64.deb
wget -c https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v5.14/amd64/linux-headers-5.14.0-051400_5.14.0-051400.202108292331_all.deb
wget -c https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v5.14/amd64/linux-image-unsigned-5.14.0-051400-generic_5.14.0-051400.202108292331_amd64.deb
wget -c https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v5.14/amd64/linux-modules-5.14.0-051400-generic_5.14.0-051400.202108292331_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
After installation, reboot the system.
The instruction for lowlatency and other architecture (ARM) installations are the same. Replace the package name in the above wget commands. You can find them on the mainline Kernel page.
If you are using Arch Linux, or Arch-based distribution, it is expected that Linux Kernel 5.14 release packages arrive within the September 2021 first week during monthly Arch .iso refresh.
Fedora 35 and Ubuntu 21.10 would feature Linux Kernel 5.14 once releases in Q4 2021.
Linux Kernel 5.15 development and merge window kicks off with this stable release.
