Linux kernel 6.10 officially rolls out: Here's what's new and improved

Over the weekend, Linux Torvalds announced Linux kernel 6.10 is now ready for general consumption. Although this isn't the biggest kernel in recent history, it does include a few new features.

One of the big ticket items for the Linux 6.10 kernel is the mseal() system call. The initial work for mseal() was announced back on Jan 31, 2024, when Jeff Xu said, "In a nutshell, mseal() protects the VMAs of a given virtual memory range against modifications, such as changes to their permission bits."

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Linux has supported the no-execute (NX) bits since way back in kernel 2.6.8 (2004), which helped protect against memory corruption bugs by preventing an attacker from writing to arbitrary memory and pointing code to it. Back then, the kernel maintained the memory permissions within a data structure called a VMA (vm_area_struct). With mseal(), the kernel gets additional protections for the VMA. This memory sealing helps to mitigate memory corruption issues, such as when an attack can break control-flow integrity by way of read-only memory (which is supposed to be trusted but can become writable).

You can read more about mseal() in Xu's original post.

Another new feature is the introduction of encrypted interactions with Trusted Platform Modules (TPM). This goes a long way to protect against external snooping and packet alteration attacks. This also helps to assure security on the system after boot by certifying the NULL seed. You can read all about tpm-security.rst on James Bottomley's post to kernel.org.

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Another security improvement comes by way of a removal. The "crypto usage statistics" feature has been removed because it's unused (and appears to never have been used). You can read about this decision in Eric Biggers' report.

As usual, you'll find plenty of improved hardware support. There are improvements for specific devices, such as the ASUS ROG 2024 series, the Lenovo ThinkPad 13X, the Microsoft Surface, Acer Aspire 1, EEKOM A8, a new IPU6 driver (for webcams on Tiger Lake and newer laptops), NZXT Kraken 2023/Elite CPU coolers, AquaComputers Octo Flow Sensors, and more.

You'll also find that Bluetooth support has been enabled for the Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE201 and MediaTek MT7922 Wi-Fi 6E modules.

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Linux 6.10 also benefits from several improvements for gaming, such as support for the Machenike G5 Pro wireless controller, support for Steam Desk IMU motion sensors, support for the GameForce Chi, and support for the Allwinner H700 (used in gaming handhelds).

You can read more about the new Linux 6.10 kernel from here and here. 

Your distribution of choice should start making updates to the 6.10 available soon. I would highly recommend you wait until such time, instead of downloading and installing the kernel manually. By upgrading from your distribution's default repositories, you can be certain the kernel will work with your current release.