New Linux 3.3 Kernel integrates Android code, updates various features.

The Linux 3.3 kernel was announced on Sunday and founder, Linus Torvalds mentioned about the updates and improvements it has brought to the table. For starters, they have managed to bring a few fixes and updates, including merging Android with the main Linux source tree. As reported by PCWorld, with this merger, developers can utilize and work on Android compatible Linux devices. As a result of this new update, the two kernels have finally been merged together, which is definitely great news.

Android being open source, developers can do what they want with the code to create something they like. An important example is how Amazon’s Kindle Fire is actually so brilliant despite still working on Android 2.2. With this merger, it will make work for developers and newbies much easier whether it's fixing basic stuff or adding additional enhancements and improvements. As a result of this merger, the Android mobile operating system is supported by the Linux community, which means developers will be able to boot onto an Android phone without changing the base Linux 3.3 kernel.

While this doesn’t mean a lot at the user's end, this is definitely some great news for developers, because this means quicker migration for kernels for phones and customized ROMs as well. This also means that creation of mobile operating systems based on Android won’t be restricted just to companies like Amazon and we could see a more widespread acceptability.

Linux 3.3 also brings in an important feature called teaming that allows developers to merge multiple Ethernet devices, instead of the round robin style mode that currently exists. The next addition includes the option to restripe Btrfs, which is the Linux filesystem that has been designed for large enterprise storage systems. With this addition, developers can create a logical volume on top of multiple drives. Other updates include network priority traffic, EFI boot support, memory management, cryptography and security. Support for new hardware architecture has been made available as well. With this update, Linux definitely brings in a lot of new additions to the table.