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Linus Torvalds just released Linux 6.2-rc5 a day early compared to his usual Sunday ritual as a result of traveling. Due to an uptick in activity this week and the downtime around Christmas / end-of-year holidays, Torvalds is planning on this cycle spanning through Linux 6.2-rc8 before going gold.
With now planning for an extra week to the release candidate compared to the usual “-rc7 than stable” hopes, this means Linux 6.2 stable will likely be released on 19 February followed by the opening of the Linux 6.3 merge window.
Torvalds commented in today’s 6.2-rc5 announcement:
Ok, so I thought we were back to normal after the winter holidays at rc4. Now, a week later, I think I was mistaken – we have fairly sizable rc5, so I suspect there was still pent up testing and fixes from people being off.
Anyway, I am expecting to do an rc8 this release regardless, just because we effectively had a lost week or two in the early rc’s, so a sizable rc5 doesn’t really worry me. I do hope we’re done with the release candidates growing, though.
Anyway, there’s a bit of everything in rc5: various driver updates (gpu, rdma, networking, tty, usb..), some architecture updates (mostly loongarch and arm64), some filesystem updates, some core networking, and tooling.
Among the changes to land this week worth mentioning were XP-PEN Deco 01 V2 drawing tablet support being added as well as more IDs for Intel Emerald Rapids.
See my Linux 6.2 feature overview to learn more about the changes coming with this next kernel version debuting as stable in mid-February.