Linux 2.6.31

Linux 2.6.31 has been released.  Read Linus' announcement on the Kernel Mailing List.

Important updates include:

• USB 3.0 support.
• A  FUSE extension that can be used to, for example, "proxy" OSS audio through the ALSA userspace layer allowing it to be used as a replacement for the in-kernel ALSA OSS emulation layer.
• ATI Radeon Kernel Mode Setting support.
• Improved desktop performance under memory strain.
• 802.15.4 support
• Fsnotify.  A backend for filesystem notification.
• Preliminary NFS 4.1 client support
• Context Readahead algorithm and mmap readahead improvements.  Benchmarks show cooperative IO performance gains of up to 40%.
• Much more!

Personally I'm happy to see some updates to the aes-ni crypto module, and improvements to Radeon and Intel graphics support.  Soon we'll see open source drivers with great performance for all graphics hardware.  If only Nvidia would stick its binary blob up its ass, and follow Intel's example of releasing an open source driver.