Improvements throughout – what's new in Linux 2.6.25

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Cornucopia

Cornucopia of new and updated drivers

Drivers – Among the vast amount of changes integrated into Linux 2.6.25 are many that improve hardware support for the numerous drivers contained in the Linux kernel, expand driver functionality, or correct driver errors. Here, only the most important driver updates are mentioned; many others are described [anchorlink Appendix]at the end of the article[/anchorlink] in a list including brief descriptions of the changes. Each description links to the corresponding commit in the web interface of the Linux source code administration system, which usually includes more information about the change and its background.

In addition to the improvement of support for Wi-Fi hardware already mentioned, the developers integrated numerous additional drivers and improved drivers already present, as well as their surrounding subsystems. Employees at Highpoint, for instance, made extensive changes to the hptiop driver for Highpoint RAID adapters, which they programmed and maintained themselves; now in addition to the 3xxx series Rocket RAID controllers, it also drives 4xxx series controllers. Until now, users who needed RAID support for these Marvell chip equipped cards had to tinker around with a proprietary driver.

The e1000e network driver, introduced in version 2.6.24, is no longer just for newer Intel southbridges and certain other selected chips; now it is used for all PCI express network chips that previously relied on its predecessor, e1000. If the new driver causes problems, it is possible to avoid the switch to it by deactivating e1000e in the kernel configuration; only then will the older e1000 take responsibility for PCIe network chips.

The kernel's audio drivers are well on the way to being at the level of ALSA 1.0.16. They can now talk to both the Asus EeePC, and the C-Medias CMI8788. The audio driver can now handle newer audio codecs like Realtek's ALC889, ALC267 and ALC269, Sigmatel's STAC92HD71, STAC92HD73 and the STAC92HD71BXX family just as well as the Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 HiFi & HD2 on VIA's VT1724, and the Hercules Fortissimo IV. With every new kernel version, white lists containing system specific workarounds, are updated, which means that audio drivers now work correctly automatically with more motherboards and notebooks, without the user having to manually activate the workaround by entering a parameter when loading the driver. The following are some new white list entries: the Asus VX1, the MSI L745 and the P35 DS3R Gigabyte board.

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) re-initializes the graphics core of newer Intel chipsets following a suspend, resulting in better suspend mode operation on many systems with Intel chipsets. Along with that, rudimentary support was provided for AMD/ATI r500 chips found on Radeon X1xxx graphic cards. This was intended to make 2D acceleration work on these graphic cards. Kernel and X developers like Dave Airlie are currently working on 3-D acceleration for these graphic chips in both the DRM and in the X.org driver packet ATI.

The kernel's DVB subsystem and certain DVB drivers in 2.6.25 provide better support for hybrid tuners; that is, the TV card tuners suitable for DVB-T and DVB-S. Along with numerous improvements to the ivtv and pvrusb2 DVB drivers, extensive cleaning up was performed and improvement added, on many other DVB and V4L drivers. The cx23885 now supports analogue television reception as well as Hauppauge's HVR1250, HVR-1500 – 1, 2, 3 – and HVR1800 WinTV models.

As planned, certain OSS sound drivers, such as btaudio, cs4232, i810_audio and via82cxxx_audio, which have long since been replaced in the kernel by the ALSA drivers, have been removed once and for all. The Softmac Wi-Fi stack, as well as the bcm43xx driver are supposed to be kicked out of the kernel during the 2.6.26 development cycle.

The I2C subsystem, the audio drivers, the AHCI and SATA drivers all work with the different variants of the ICH10, the southbridge slated to be used in the numerous Intel chipsets expected to be launched early this summer. Also new in 2.6.25 are the bnx2x network driver for Broadcom's BCM57710 10G chip, the enc28j60 driver for the ENC28J60 chip, and the ipwireless driver for modem chips on various UMTS 3G PC cards.

For the first time in version 2.6.25, the kernel supports Sony's MemoryStick and the JMicron JMB38x MemoryStick host controller, albeit at a very rudimentary level; it only supports the MemoryStick Pro cards with the TI FlashMedia interface. Some users might ask if this, and other rudimentary drivers still in an early stage of development, are really ready for the kernel. Torvalds and some other developers recently addressed this in a discussion about an Infiniband driver newly added to 2.6.25, stating that drivers should be incorporated sooner rather than later – ATI driver update –, since for many users a rudimentary driver is better than none at all.

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