--- title: Kernel 6.8: MediaTek community flourishes | daily.dev description: Linux Kernel 6.8 brings significant improvements across networking, memory management, and hardware support. Networking core structures were reorganized for... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/kernel-6-8-mediatek-community-flourishes-c5te2trlm twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Kernel 6.8: MediaTek community flourishes | daily.dev og:description: Linux Kernel 6.8 brings significant improvements across networking, memory management, and hardware support. Networking core structures were reorganized for... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/kernel-6-8-mediatek-community-flourishes-c5te2trlm og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/C5tE2TrLM.png og:image:alt: Kernel 6.8: MediaTek community flourishes og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Kernel 6.8: MediaTek community flourishes **[Collabora Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/collabora)** · 9 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Linux Kernel 6.8 brings significant improvements across networking, memory management, and hardware support. Networking core structures were reorganized for cache line optimization, yielding up to 40% TCP performance gains under high concurrency. SLAB has been removed, leaving SLUB as the sole kernel memory allocator. MediaTek's upstream community contributions expanded substantially, covering new Kompanio SoCs (MT8186, MT8188), MT7988 router SoC support, and numerous Chromebook fixes. Collabora contributed patches for Rockchip RK3588 audio and USB3, AMD Vangogh/Steam Deck OLED sound fixes, MediaTek SVS driver refactoring, DisplayPort clock fixes, and Panfrost GPU power management improvements for Mali GPUs. On the media side, the 32-buffer-per-v4l2-queue limit was removed, AV1 support was added to the virtual stateless decoder, and the Chips & Media Wave5 video codec driver was introduced. DRM-CI testing was expanded to cover VirtIO GPU, MediaTek MT8173, and Qualcomm APQ 8016 systems. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What TCP performance improvement does Linux kernel 6.8 bring and how was it achieved? Linux kernel 6.8 can improve TCP performance by up to 40% under many concurrent connections. The gain comes from reorganizing variable ordering in core networking structures (socks, netdev, netns, mibs) to optimize cache line consumption. Previously, variables were arranged chronologically or logically without regard to cache lines. Warnings were also added to guard against future header changes that could regress performance. _Kernel networking engineers tracking performance regressions watch changes like these on daily.dev._ ### What happened to the 32-buffer limit per v4l2 queue in Linux kernel 6.8? The 32-buffer-per-v4l2-queue limit was removed in Linux kernel 6.8. Benjamin Gaignard's patches replaced the fixed 32-entry array with improved indexing, added reporting of the maximum buffer count per queue, and cleaned up how the num_buffers field is used. This groundwork also prepares for a future 'delete buffers' feature, enabling dynamic resolution changes in stateless decoders like the Verisilicon VP9 driver. _Developers working on V4L2 stateless decoders can follow buffer management changes like this on daily.dev._ ### What is the status of SLAB vs SLUB in Linux kernel 6.8? SLAB was removed in Linux kernel 6.8, making SLUB the only object-level memory allocator in the kernel. Following the removal, additional work was done to streamline and optimize the SLUB allocator and the kmalloc() APIs to account for the consolidation. _Systems programmers keeping up with kernel memory allocator changes can track them on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Kernel 7.2: RK3588 media, smarter GPU memory, and Rust foundations](https://daily.dev/posts/kernel-7-2-rk3588-media-smarter-gpu-memory-and-rust-foundations-vrpih8voj) · Collabora Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/kernel-6-8-mediatek-community-flourishes-c5te2trlm) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Kernel 6.8: MediaTek community flourishes","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/kernel-6-8-mediatek-community-flourishes-c5te2trlm","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/kernel-6-8-mediatek-community-flourishes-c5te2trlm"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:54:35.312Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:01:34.777Z","description":"Linux Kernel 6.8 brings significant improvements across networking, memory management, and hardware support. 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