Linux 7.2 was released this week on schedule, marking one of the busiest development cycles, second only to 6.7. The release includes significant contributions from Igalia, particularly in GPU scheduling and power management.

Key highlights include cache-aware scheduling, MGLRU improvements, sub-schedulers for sched_ext, and automatic multi-size transparent hugepages. Igalia contributed the DRM scheduler fair policy, which improves GPU sharing among multiple clients, though it remains opt-in due to a last-minute regression discovered during the 7.2-rc7 week.

The release introduces Runtime Power Management for Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 GPUs, allowing the V3D driver to power down the GPU when idle rather than keeping it constantly active. This significantly reduces power consumption. Additionally, long-standing bugs affecting Retro Pie users on Raspberry Pi 3 have been resolved, eliminating random GPU hangs and system crashes.

Other notable contributions include sched-ext observability improvements, futex documentation and testing enhancements, and fixes for GPU resets on Raspberry Pi devices. Work on HDMI 2.1 Fixed Rate Link support also continues, building on previous efforts by Rodrigo Siqueira.