"A few days ago, Linus Torvalds released the seventh Linux
2.6.30 release candidate. According to Torvalds, most of the merged
changes are minor, and the next big kernel version is nearing
completion -- although Torvalds does still anticipate an eighth
release candidate. The Kernel Log takes this opportunity to discuss
what's new in the driver arena of Linux 2.6.30; the final version
of the forthcoming kernel will probably be released in one to three
weeks.
"Audio, video
"The audio drivers of Linux 2.6.30 will roughly be in line with
the status of the ALSA 1.0.20 drivers. Aside from a driver for
Atmel AC97 codecs and Xonar Essence STX support, this curiously
also includes a new ISA driver for various sound cards of the
Turtle Beach MultiSound series. The ASoC (ALSA System on Chip)
framework and the HD audio drivers were also overhauled quite
extensively. The latter now offer improved runtime reconfiguration
via Sysfs (1, 2, 3). As in every new kernel version, the developers
also considerably extended the white lists that allow
hardware-specific adjustments ("quirks") to be made automatically
-- see the list at the end of this article for details."
