4.4 Merge window, part 2

By the time that the first 4.4 merge-window article was written, most of the action was done; a mere 700 non-merge changesets were pulled into the mainline repository between then and the release of 4.4-rc1 on November 15. Many of those changes were fixes that wandered in during the merge window itself, leaving just a couple of changes worthy of note here:

• There is a new "devfreq cooling" mechanism for the thermal management of devices. On properly equipped hardware, this framework can put an overheating device into a lower-power mode to keep its operating temperature within bounds.

• The pulse-width modulator (PWM) tree was pulled, adding support for Renesas R-Car PWM controllers, Marvell Berlin PWM controllers, Broadcom BCM7038 PWM controllers, and MediaTek display PWM controllers.

All told, 11,528 changesets found their way into the mainline during the 4.4 merge window. That makes 4.4 a busy development cycle relative to its immediate predecessors:

Merge-window changes
Release	Changes
4.0	8,950
4.1	10,659
4.2	12,092
4.3	10,756
4.4	11,528

If the usual 63-day schedule holds, we can expect the final 4.4 release to happen on January 3, 2016, though it is always possible that the holiday season might slow things down a bit. Even if we don't get 4.4 as a new year's present, it should show up soon thereafter.

Index entries for this article
Kernel	Releases/4.4

---

to post comments