Kernel Watch
Jon Masters summarises the latest happenings in the Linux kernel, so that you don’t have to.
L inus Torvalds released the first Release Candidate (RC) kernel for what will become Linux 6.12 in the next couple of months. Among the new features in this kernel is a faster implementation of the getrandom system call using the kernel vDSO (virtual Dynamic Shared Object) mechanism that will speed up a surprising number of applications that require frequent random numbers (and now can skip a true system call). 6.12 also adds support for protected KVM (pKVM) guests, a mechanism used on Android devices to support virtualisation while handling some of the unique constraints of such devices.