Linus Torvalds released the second release candidate (RC2) for Linux Kernel 7.1 on Sunday, 3 May 2026. While he called it a "regular" and "fairly normal" update, the numbers behind the code look a bit strange.
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A Massive Cleanup with Lopsided Stats
At first glance, the statistics for this update look very unusual. Roughly half of the total changes in this release are inside the "KVM selftests" area. However, developers did not actually add a huge amount of new stuff there.
Instead, the team performed a massive renaming project. They changed variable and type names in the selftests, so they match the naming rules used in the rest of the Linux kernel. Because of this, the data looks "big and strange", but Torvalds advised testers to simply "ignore that oddity".
Drivers and General Fixes
Once you set aside the renaming project, the rest of the update follows a very standard pattern. About half of the remaining patches focus on driver fixes. As is often the case, GPU and networking drivers received the most attention. The rest of the patches are spread across many different subsystems to ensure everything runs smoothly.
The AI Tooling Trend
One interesting observation from Linus Torvalds involves the high volume of patches. In the Linux 7.1-rc2 announcement mail, he noted that this update is "not small" and follows a recent trend of higher-than-usual patch counts.
Torvalds suspects that developers are increasingly using AI tooling to help generate these patches. This pattern first appeared in Linux Kernel version 7.0 and seems to be continuing in this new release cycle.
Real-World Testing: The Dell Backlight Bug
Community testing is already helping developers find real-world problems. For example, a tester reported a backlight issue on a Dell Latitude 7390 laptop during the 7.1 first release candidate. Unfortunately, the user confirmed that this bug still exists in 7.1 RC2.
To fix this, maintainers have asked the user to perform a "git bisect". This process involves building the kernel several times, usually about 14 steps, to find exactly which change broke the backlight. They also suggested to use ccache to speed up this process significantly.
Download and Test Linux Kernel 7.1 RC2
If you want to try this version, you can find Linux 7.1-rc2 code on the Official Linux Kernel Archives and the Linus Torvalds's git tree. Please keep in mind that these "prepatch" releases are mostly for developers and enthusiasts.
You must be able to compile the kernel from source to use it. Because these are early versions, they may contain bugs or be unstable.
If you need a reliable computer for your daily job, you should stay with the current "stable" version until the final 7.1 release is ready.
What is Next?
Now that RC2 is out, the development team will continue to focus on stability and bug fixes. We can expect several more release candidates over the coming weeks as the team "calms the code down" for the final launch.
Users can expect the Linux Kernel 7.1 final version on Sunday, June 7, 2026 or Sunday, June 14, 2026 depending upon the number of RCs.
