The latest iteration of the Linux kernel has arrived and it contains some pretty cool features. And, according to Linus Torvalds (the creator of Linux), this release "...has been going smoothly."

There are plenty of the usual code clean-ups, fixes, and upgrades to existing features. But taking the limelight for this release is the initial support for USB4 and WiFi 7.

WiFi 7 supports the 6Ghz band and has a max data rate of 23 Gbps, so getting this rolled into the kernel should give Linux a big boost in network speeds. As well, USB4 supports up to 80 Gps data transfer rate, so there's another area that will give Linux an increase. Remember, however, this is just initial support, so don't expect to see these newer technologies working just yet.

Other changes added to the 6.5 kernel include fixes for Intel P-State CPU scaling, three modes for amd-pstate (active, passive, and guided autonomous), Btrfs performance and storage optimizations, rumble support for the latest iterations of Xbox controllers, overclocking support for AMD Radeon RX 7000 GPUs, optimizations for AMD and Intel graphics drivers, more Rust code, support for new hotkeys found on ThinkBook 14s Yoga ITL, and much more.

You can read the full list of changes and fixes in this post by Torvalds.

When the Linux 6.5 kernel hits your distribution will vary. Rolling release distributions like Arch and Fedora (a semi-rolling release) should see it soon. Ubuntu (and its derivatives) should see 6.5 along with Ubuntu 23.10.