The Linux Kernel 6.15 was released on May 25, 2025, and it brings a host of enhancements – hardware support, performance improvements, better security, and improvements on the filesystem management. Below is a comprehensive overview of its key features:
1. Core Enhancements
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Rust DRM Driver | Introduces the NOVA driver, the first Rust-written DRM driver for NVIDIA RTX 2000+ series, enhancing memory safety. |
| FWCTL Subsystem | New secure framework for user-space RPC communication with firmware. |
| Zero-Copy Networking | Enables direct packet transfers to user-space memory using io_uring, reducing CPU load. |
| SELinux Wildcards | Adds wildcard matching for network interfaces, improving security policy flexibility. |
2. Hardware and Driver Support
| Hardware | Update |
|---|---|
| Apple Silicon | Touchscreen & Touch Bar support for M-series Macs. |
| Intel Xe / Arc | SVM, thermal readings, and GPU ‘wedged’ event detection added. |
| Other Devices | New support for Xbox Turtle Beach controllers, Killer E5000 NICs, and MacBook Touch Bar |
3. Performance Improvements
| Area | Enhancement |
|---|---|
| exFAT | Massive boost in file deletion speed – from 4+ minutes to under 2 seconds. |
| AMD Zen 5 | Optimized AES-CTR encryption for better cryptographic performance. |
| Boot Time | New hugetlb_alloc_threads speeds up boot initialization. |
| turbostat | Scales to support up to 8192 CPU cores. |
4. Filesystem and Storage Enhancements
| Component | Update |
|---|---|
| Bcachefs | Moves closer to production-ready status with a soft format freeze and self-healing features. |
| Zstandard | Upgraded to v1.5.7, improving compression speed and reliability. |
| Block Layer | Supports hardware-wrapped inline encryption keys. |
5. Security and Memory Management
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| io_uring SELinux | New hook lets SELinux apply fine-grained policy checks. |
| Memory Tuning | New defrag_mode sysctl helps reduce hugepage fragmentation. Locking structures refactored for efficiency. |
6. Developer Tools and Infrastructure
| Tool | Update |
|---|---|
| Python 3.9+ | Minimum requirement for building and docs. |
| Fanotify | API now tracks mount/unmount events for real-time monitoring. |
If you’re excited to try out Linux Kernel 6.15, you can now download the source code from kernel.org and build it yourself. But users of rolling release distributions such as Arch Linux will be the first to get the update in their OS automatically, as it’s expected to appear in their system updates within the next few days or weeks.
