Linux kernel 6.14 Features and Release Date: Best Intro

In this article from Orcacore, we will bring you some interesting content about Linux kernel 6.14 Features and Release date. About two weeks ago, Linus Torvalds shared some exciting news about the first release candidate (RC) for the Linux kernel 6.14 series, which is now available for public testing. Now it’s time for Linux fans to start testing the weekly Release Candidate builds. Because the final release of Linux kernel 6.14 is about two months away.

Table of Contents

Key Features and Improvements of Linux kernel 6.14

First, let’s take a look at some of the new Linux kernel 6.14 Features.

The first thing to note is that the Linux kernel 6.14 series has several notable additions. These include:

Support for amd-pstate preferential kernel ranking

A new cgroup controller for device memory

A new accelerator driver for AMD XDNA Ryzen AI NPUs

DRM panic support for the AMDGPU driver

Extended SELinux permissions

Support for energy counters for AMD processors and power supply extensions

Support for T-Head vector extensions in RISC-V

More updates to use stable Rust features in kernel development

This is a big step towards building a stable kernel with Rust features exclusively. In previous releases, we were limited to unstable features. Now, as per the latest Linux kernel 6.14 Features, we are moving to the “derive_coerce_pointee” macro. This feature will make this version of the Linux kernel more stable.

Linux kernel 6.14 Features

Linux kernel 6.14 promises support for KVM hypervisor service for user-mode VMM in LoongArch. Also important is that it introduces PCI error recovery mechanism for IBM System/390.

Other Linux kernel 6.14 Features include PM suspend/resume support for Raspberry Pi, manual fan control for Dell XPS 9370 laptops, and broader support for various hardware such as SoundWire devices and Rockchip SFC controllers.

Linux kernel 6.14 has been updated with updated drivers to improve hardware compatibility. To go into more detail, these include a new driver for the SM8750 platform, support for the MT8188 Mali-G57 MC3 in the Panfrost driver, an EDAC driver for Loongson SoCs, and support for various game controllers and audio chips.

Linux kernel 6.14 changes in the networking section

In the networking front, Linux kernel 6.14 supports IPsec for aggregated and fragmented internal IPs. It is worth noting that in the networking department, a big step has been taken towards large packet transmission, PHY statistics reporting, and network notifications for IPv4 and IPv6 address changes.

Another improvement in Linux kernel 6.14 is the improvement in ALSA APIs for MIDI 2.0. This kernel version also supports different SoCs and better management of NFS sessions, which reduces the time it takes to suspend and resume systems on certain machines.

Linux kernel 6.14 Release Date

The final version of Linux kernel 6.14 is expected to be released in late March 2025. Of course, the exact release date will depend on how many Release Candidate milestones are announced during this time. To break this down, if there are only seven RCs, we can expect it on March 23rd, but if there are eight, it will probably arrive on March 30th.

How to Download Linux Kernel 6.14?

You can download the first Release Candidate of Linux Kernel 6.14 from Linus Torvalds’ git tree, directly. If this is too complicated for you, you can easily download it from the kernel website.