Linux 5.5 is available and in this post, we will tell you the most relevant of this release.
After several weeks of intense development, we have a new version of the Linux Kernel, specifically 5.5. This version is one of the last ones before the release of Ubuntu 20.04, so it could be the version chosen for this distro.
Linux 5.5 has been released with a lot of improvements in the support of new devices and especially in the graphics section with AMD and Intel at the head that could be used in Ubuntu 20.04.
Linux 5.5 main features
As we always say in every release of a new version of the Kernel is that many new features are at the technical level. We also know that many existing drivers are updated to improve support. As well as the inclusion of others.
However, the most important improvements in this sector are taken by AMD and Intel. This new version improves the quality of the AMDGPU driver adding support to new graphic card models, but above all, improving the support to the existing ones. In the case of Intel, the support to Gen12 graphics is complemented.
In the file systems, the Btrfs RAID1 supports 3 and 4 copies, which makes the replication process faster and more efficient in many units. Also, this release adds NFS client support for cross-device offloaded copy.
If you have a System76 device this version will be very useful because and includes a new ACPI driver for them.
Also, in this version, the bufferbloat is mitigated thanks to Airtime Queue Limits. The bufferbloat is a problem that affects the performance of wifi networks in Linux.
Final thoughts
As we have seen, this version is quite interesting and should be followed closely because it could be included in Ubuntu 20.04.
If you want to install it, you can either compile the source code yourself or wait for the already compiled packages to come out. Anyway, we don’t recommend installing it on computers that already work well.
The new features are a lot, as always we can access Kernel Newbies to get a more readable list of all.
So, you can read our post about why should use Linux over Windows 7.
