Some days ago Linus released the newest Kernel, version 2.6.20. As usual kernelnewbies has a very detailed information page about the new release. The main new features are paravirtualization for i386, the integration of the kvm virtualization, fault injection, a generic HID interface and some other things.
However, the new WLan subsystem again didn’t make it into the main kernel, and it looks like that it will need some more work, and therefore will not make it into the next release.
On the other side, the developers think about adding the Automatic Kernel Tunables framewrok to the table: AKT makes it possible to change performance relevant kernel parameters at runtime to improve the kernel performance.
It was also supposed to forbid non-GPL kernel modules in all kernels released in 2008 and later. We’ll see what comes out of that. For me that is not to important because I can use the open ATI drivers and atm they are enough. Also, my next machine will most likely have a Intel graphics chip, and their drivers are open.
/home/liquidat 