Linux kernel 6.19 arrives and the next will be 7.0

Linus Torvalds announced Linux kernel 6.19 is officially out now and then next is planned to be the big 7.0 release.

In the release announcement posted on Sunday - February 8th, Torvalds said:

No big surprises anywhere last week, so 6.19 is out as expected - just as the US prepares to come to a complete standstill later today watching the latest batch of televised commercials. The betting man would expect them all to be AI-generated, but maybe some enterprising company decides to buck the trend? Doubtful, but there's always a slight chance.

But for anybody outside the US, maybe taking the newest kernel out for a spin instead is an option?

I have more than three dozen pull requests for when the merge window opens tomorrow - thank you to all the early maintainers. And as people have mostly figured out, I'm getting to the point where I'm being confused by large numbers (almost running out of fingers and toes again), so the next kernel is going to be called 7.0.

But today, the big news is 6.19. And some random sporting event.

As usual, the list of changes is far beyond any normal human to comprehend. The Linux kernel is a truly colossal project that covers so much, and the kernel folks never really put up any highlights of what to expect from it when it's released.

Just some cherry-picked bits of what to expect from it includes:

• DRM Color Pipeline API for improved HDR support.
• The modern AMDGPU driver is now used for older Radeon GPUs bringing better performance, Vulkan support via RADV, better power management and so on.
• A new ASUS Armoury driver to bring more ASUS hardware tweaks directly on Linux.
• Improved ROG Xbox Ally X support.
• Improved Legion Go 2 support.
• Ayaneo got their own ayaneo-ec driver dedicated to their hardware (like handhelds), along with new support for the Ayaneo 3 with their modular controllers.
• Steam Deck APU ID added to the k10temp driver for reading CPU temps.
• Further work to expand open source NVIDIA graphics drivers.
• Many more NTFS driver improvements.
• Expanded Apple hardware support.
• Lenovo Rapid Charge mode support.
• Various additions to new hardware support, especially for laptops.

See the full very long technical changelog for everything. KernelNewbies also have a breakdown of various patches.