Linus Torvalds has given the world version 4.11 of the Linux kernel.
“So after that extra week with an rc8, things were pretty calm,” Torvalds posted to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, adding “I’m much happier releasing a final 4.11 now.
So what do we get this time around? Among other things, Linux is now better at hot-swapping solid state disks and can now do journaling on RAID 4/5/6 volumes. While we’re talking storage, there’s also support for the OPAL self-encrypting disk drive standard.
The kernel has also gained support for the Shared Memory Communications over RDMA (SMC-R) (SMC-R) spec, an IBM invention that allows virtual machines to share memory and therefore speeds up communications between the machines, helps with load balancing and doesn’t hurt when clustering Linux boxen.