Linux 6.5

Linux 6.5 is released, including deprecation of the old SLAB allocator, faster PCIe waits (especially notable for us when things like SATA controllers start timing out), faster parallel direct I/O on ext4, and improvements to the workqueue. There's not a lot notable for Power ISA, though ELFv2 is now the default for 64-bit big-endian kernel builds, and if you're running Power10 this release adds support for the DEXCR SPR (Dynamic Execution Control Register) which helps to reduce speculative execution risk. Expect to see 6.5 in bleeding-edge distros like Fedora soon (and almost certainly in Fedora 39).