New Linux 5.19 Kernel Offers Major Apple Silicon Support Upgrade

Linux Torvalds, the main developer of the Linux kernel used by the Linux distribution and other operating systems such as Android, has revealed the latest Linux 5.19, which offers several delicious features.

Torvalds announced the new Linux update using an Apple silicon-powered MacBook Air laptop running Asahi Linux.

In his message announcing the update, Torvalds explained that it was his third time using a Mac, the first being a PoweredPC-based device and later an earlier MacBook Air.

Apple Silicon is the company’s custom-made processor chips in its Macbook laptops. Apple’s silicon chips are ARM-based, meaning they use a different chip architecture than the chip provided by the company’s former supplier, Intel.

Apple first launched its silicon chips with the MacBook Air at the end of 2020 and the MacBook Pro with the name M1 chips. Subsequently, the company introduced Apple Silicon chips in almost all other Macs. Upgrades for the silicon chips were released with the M1 Pro, Max, Ultra and M2 chips, among others.

In addition to compatibility with Apple Silicon, the processor chip in Apple’s latest products, Linux 5.19 also offers other unique features. These include support for AMD’s Secure Nested Paging feature, a new user-space API for managing MultiPath TCP (MPTCP) flows, initial support for Loongson’s “LoongArch” RISC ISA CPU architecture, and support for the ARM Scalable Matrix Extension (SME).

It also supports page-based memory types in supervisor mode and the ability to run 32-bit binaries on 64-bit systems for RISC-V architectures. It also supports SMP coprocessors, KCSAN, and hibernation on the Xtensa architecture.

There is a new Intel “in-field scan” mechanism for detecting problems in Intel CPUs running Linux 5.19. It also supports storing billions of advanced attributes with any inode. A new “logged attribute replay” feature allows multiple extended files that are attributed to be modified in an atomic manner in the XFS file system at the same time.

The sources for this piece include an article in MUO.