Linus Torvalds announced the sixth release candidate of Linux Kernel version 6.12 on 4 November 2024, describing it as "another week, another rc" with "nothing odd or special" going on.
Despite being slightly larger than a typical rc6, Torvalds reassured the community that "nothing stands out" in terms of concerning issues.
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Key Changes in Linux Kernel 6.12-rc6
Driver Updates:
A significant portion (40%) of the changes in this release cycle involved driver updates, spanning networking, graphics processing units (GPUs), sound, and industrial I/O (IIO).
Diverse Improvements:
Beyond drivers, rc6 addressed a variety of areas, including:
- Tooling and documentation
- Core memory management (MM) and networking
- Filesystems like bcachefs, XFS, Btrfs, and AFS
- Minor architecture-specific fixes
Build Regressions and Improvements
Geert Uytterhoeven, known for his work on Linux kernel build testing, provided an analysis of build regressions and improvements in 6.12-rc6 compared to previous versions.
- Errors: Notably, rc6 introduced 3 new build errors while resolving 7 previous ones.
- Warnings: On the other hand, there were 32 new build warnings, a significant increase, but 3 existing warnings were also fixed.
Focus on Stability
Torvalds' statement that "boring is good" for rc6 emphasizes the importance of stability at this stage of the development cycle.
The focus shifts from introducing new features to solidifying the existing codebase and addressing any remaining issues before the final release.
Try Linux Kernel 6.12 RC6
The users and developers are requested to test Linux 6.12-rc6 and submit the issues if there are any. Linux kernel 6.12-rc6 can be downloaded from the Kernel.org website or the Linus Torvalds's git tree.
The development of Linux 6.12-rc6 was mostly quiet this week, but a large number of new build warnings have popped up. The community will probably focus on fixing these issues in the next release candidates to make sure Linux 6.12 is solid and ready to go.
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