While there have been various elements of the Apple M1 and M2 SoC support in the mainline Linux kernel along with support for various Macs, different features have been missing from the upstream kernel such as the Apple GPU kernel graphics driver as one big example. On a more fundamental level, the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel is going to cross off another low-level expectation for Apple Silicon Macs on the mainline kernel: the ability to reboot the system...
The Linux 6.16 kernel is expected to be released as stable this coming Sunday, 27 July, barring any last minute issues that cause Linus Torvalds to have reservations over issuing v6.16 stable and to instead do a v6.16-rc8 test release. With Linux 6.16 imminent, here's a reminder about some of the most interesting features in this next Linux kernel version...