Linux Kernel 5.9-rc3 Released with Extensive Fallthrough Macro Changes and New Hardware Support
Linux Kernel 5.9-rc3 has been released, featuring a massive introduction of over two thousand fallthrough macro instances, numerous driver and architecture updates—including AMD Sienna Cichlid and Navy Flounder GPU support, Intel Rocket Lake and SERIALIZE instructions, RISC‑V enhancements, NVMe ZNS, and other improvements—while the stable 5.9 version is expected in early to mid‑October.
Linux Kernel 5.9-rc3 has been released. The most significant change is the widespread use of the fallthrough macro across the entire code tree, adding more than two thousand macro instances.
Linus Torvalds noted that despite the "fallthrough" annotation generating some background noise, the release still provides the usual driver fixes (GPU, USB, etc.) and architecture updates, with notable changes for arm64 (KVM and device tree), as well as updates for x86 and powerpc.
Because AMD's next‑generation GPU is slated for later this year, Linux Kernel 5.9 also adds support for AMD Sienna Cichlid and Navy Flounder GPUs.
Other noteworthy changes include:
Support for FSGSBASE
AMD Zen CPUs enable P2PDMA (peer‑to‑peer direct memory access)
Support for Intel Rocket Lake CPUs
Support for Intel SERIALIZE instruction
Additional RISC‑V architecture features
Support for NVMe ZNS
ARM/ARM6 frequency governor defaults to Schedutil
Introduction of colored LED framework
Various driver and filesystem improvements
The Linux Kernel 5.9 stable release is expected in early to mid‑October, depending on the final release cycle.
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