Linus Torvalds has loosed the first release candidate for version 5.14 of the Linux kernel,

Torvalds’ remarks about the new release open with his hopes that this release cycle is smooth, along with observations that the size of a release does not correlate with whether the process is calm.

He then encouraged developers to “ignore - once again - another set of big AMD GPU hardware description header files” present in this cut of the kernel.

“We seem to have those fairly regularly,” he wrote, “and they are always these huge generated headers that end up dwarfing everything else. Almost exactly half of the whole 5.14-rc1 patch is comprised of those GPU headers, and it skews the statistics a lot.”

You all know the drill by now. It's been the usual two weeks of merge
window, and not it's closed, and 5.14-rc1 is out there.

As usual, it's much too big to post the shortlog, with about 13k
commits (an another ~800 merge commits) by about 1650 developers, and
a diffstat summary of

11859 files changed, 817707 insertions(+), 285485 deletions(-)

Appended is my mergelog which gives you an overview of what I've
pulled during the merge window, and who I pulled from. And as usual, I
want to stress how this is obviously just a very high-level summary,
and tiny part of the actual developer community - if you want the full
details of all those changes, you'll have to go to the -git tree.

On the whole, I don't think there are any huge surprises in here, and
size-wise this seems to be a pretty regular release too. Let's hope
that that translates to a nice and calm release cycle, but you never
know. Last release was big, but it was all fairly calm despite that,
so size isn't always the determining factor here..

If somebody wants to look at the actual diff for the release, I'd
encourage you to ignore - once again - another set of big AMD GPU
hardware description header files. We seem to have those fairly
regularly, and they are always these huge generated headers that end
up dwarfing everything else. Almost exactly half of the whole 5.14-rc1
patch is comprised of those GPU headers, and it skews the statistics a
lot.

Now, even if you ignore that AMD header drop, drivers account for over
two thirds of the changes when you look at the diff, and that's
perfectly normal. What's slightly less usual is how there's a lot of
line _removals_ in there, with the old IDE layer finally having met
its long-overdue demise, and all our IDE support is now based on
libata.

Of course, the fact that we removed all that legacy IDE code doesn't
mean that we had a reduction in lines over-all: a few tens of
thousands of lines of legacy code is nowhere near enough to balance
out the usual kernel growth. But it's still a nice thing to see the
cleanup.

So drivers dominate: even when ignoring the AMD header addition
there's a fair amount of gpu updates, but there's networking drivers,
rdma, sound, scsi, staging, media...

Outside of drivers, there's all the usual suspects: architecture
updates (arm, arm64, x86, powerpc, s390, with a smattering of other
architecture updates too) and various core kernel updates: networking,
filesystems, VM, scheduling etc. And the usual documentation and
tooling (perf and self-tests) updates.

Please do test, and we can get the whole calming-down period rolling
and hopefully get a timely final 5.14 release.

Linus

Following the two-week long merge window, the first release candidate to Linux 5.14 is now available with all the shiny new features to be found in this next kernel release.

Linus Torvalds commented in the 5.14-rc1 announcement, "On the whole, I don't think there are any huge surprises in here, and size-wise this seems to be a pretty regular release too. Let's hope that that translates to a nice and calm release cycle, but you never know. Last release was big, but it was all fairly calm despite that, so size isn't always the determining factor here.."

Linus has released 5.14-rc1 and closed the merge window for this development cycle...

This release of kernel has contributions from about 1,650 developers. There were 11,859 file changes, nearly 82,000 insertions and 285,485 deletions.

Torvalds expects this to be a "pretty regular release" compared to the larger 4.13 stable release in late June, which brought early support for Apple's M1 Arm-based processor.

"Last release was big, but it was all fairly calm despite that, so size isn't always the determining factor here," he warned in the Linux Kernel Mailing List.

With last night's release of Linux 5.14-rc1 the merge window is officially over for this next version of the Linux kernel. With that, here is a look at the highlights for the forthcoming Linux 5.14 kernel based upon our original reporting during the merge window.

Linux 5.14 was another busy cycle with seeing changes like a new tracer for operating system noise, memfd_secret for allowing secret memory areas on the system, many CPU/architecture-related updates, core scheduling for allowing better security with Intel Hyper Threading, many open-source graphics driver improvements for Intel and AMD, removal of legacy IDE support, and much more.

On the heels of the 5.13 kernel debut, Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux) announced the first release candidate for the Linux 5.14 kernel. According to Torvalds, this kernel will be a fairly standard release (especially compared to the 5.13 kernel). In fact, Linus said of this release, "On the whole, I don't think there are any huge surprises in here, and size-wise this seems to be a pretty regular release too." Torvalds added, "Let's hope that that translates to a nice and calm release cycle, but you never know."

That the 5.14 kernel is a less-than-exciting release is mostly because it follows one of the biggest kernel releases in recent history (especially with the 5.13 kernel adding support for Apple M1 Arm-based CPUs).

That doesn't, however, mean the 5.14 kernel isn't without its own exciting features. Let's take a look at what's possibly coming to the next Linux kernel.

Linux founder Linus Torvalds recently posted an update on the Linux Kernel Mailing List announcing the arrival of Linux kernel version 5.14. Perhaps the biggest change is the removal of legacy support for Parallel ATA (PATA), also referred to as ATAm or IDE.

IDE is a connector that has long served as a base for IBM computers, which turned into PCs later. It is a type of connector that is used to connect hard disk drives, floppy disk drives, and optical disc drives in computers. As more advanced protocols appeared, IDE has become irrelevant to most PC builders in recent years, having been replaced by the SATA connector in modern PCs.

As the Linux kernel continues to advance, supporting code for legacy devices becomes increasingly difficult, while the need becomes less and less. That is why the Linux kernel is officially dumping support and removing the IDE code from its repositories.

The upcoming Linux kernel 5.14 adds several laptop improvements for devices manufactured by Lenovo, Dell, Asus, and Microsoft. So if you're using a notebook device from one of these manufacturers, you may be getting some significant improvements in user experience.

Let's see what new features you can expect from the 5.14 kernel version.

Following the usual two-week long merge window, the first release candidate (RC) of Linux kernel v5.14 is now available, offering a peek into the expected features of upcoming launches.

The release, set to roll out in just a few week's time, is in fact a good representation of the state of the kernel development of late, with lots of code cleanup and dwarfed by the addition of new drivers.

“The fact that we removed all that legacy IDE code doesn't mean that we had a reduction in lines over-all: a few tens of thousands of lines of legacy code is nowhere near enough to balance out the usual kernel growth,” observed Linus Torvalds, the principal developer of the mainline Linux kernel.