At the first-ever LinuxCon Europe held in Prague, Czech Republic (co-located with the Linux Kernel Summit and GStreamer Conference), the 3.1 Linux kernel was launched.
Among the key new features, writes Joe Brockmeier in an article on The Linux Foundation website, are support for OpenRISC,a RISC architecture available under the GPL license, as well as support for Near-Field Communication (NFC), which is anticipated to become a generally accepted way for making payments as well as for providing identification using smartphones. The 3.1 release also includes support for a project called cpupowerutils, which can enable an overview of the power tuning tools that come with various architectures.
In addition, the new release has a new iSCSI implementation and support for Nintendo Wii Remotes, as well as a range of other features, Brockmeier notes. In aggregate, he writes, the latest release features "a series of steady improvements and additions that keep Linux on the cutting edge for everything from mobile phones to supercomputers." Read "A Look at Linux 3.1" here.