Linus Torvalds has released the sixth release candidate for Linux 6.16 meaning we are just two or three weeks away from the stable version. Notably this week, Torvalds had a “scare” due to instability being caused within the kernel. Annoyingly, the issue was difficult to reproduce or find the root cause.
Initially, Torvalds thought it might be a DRM or Netlink issue and started flailing around blaming everybody “and their pet hamster”. Thankfully, the issue was able to be replicated and fixed with a simple revert to before the issue was introduced.
Aside from this pretty big issue, this week saw some pretty random fixes spread out fairly evenly without a heavy focus on any area. Torvalds mentions that there are fixes for drivers, arch fixes, filesystems, networking, tooling, and documentation.
For those unfamiliar with the development cycle of the Linux kernel, after a release has gone gold, the new features are added to the kernel and then the release cycles begin to stabilize those new features. There are typically seven or eight RCs and then the new version comes out and Linux distributions can start rolling it out.
The main benefit of upgrading the kernel is that new hardware tends to be included and file systems see improved performance. If you’ve ever tried Linux before and the Wi-Fi or graphics didn’t work, trying again after a big kernel upgrade may see your hardware start working.
While this week saw a worrying scare that could have potentially delayed Linux 6.16, things seem back on track with Torvalds calling for continued testing for the remaining “couple more weeks”. This suggests we will see testing this week before rc7 and then testing for another week before the stable release.
If no big issues crop up, we should see the release of Linux 6.16 on July 27. More bleeding-edge distributions like Fedora and Arch should then release it for their users soon after, while slower distros like Ubuntu will wait until the next big release.