Linus Torvalds Announces First Linux 5.15 Kernel Release Candidate

As the two-week merge window closes today, the upcoming Linux 5.15 kernel series is now ready for public testing as Linus Torvalds just announced the availability of the first Release Candidate (RC) milestone.

It’s been two weeks since the release of Linux kernel 5.14, which slowly makes its way into the stable software repositories of various popular GNU/Linux distributions, and now it’s time to go out and test another new kernel series, Linux 5.15, which will be released later this fall.

Linux 5.15 looks to be yet another release that focuses on further improving the support for AMD CPUs and GPUs, but it will also bring new features like NTFS3 and KSMBD (CIFS/SMB3) support, and the usual new and updated drivers for better hardware support. But all in all, it looks like a small release.

“At only just over 10k non-merge commits, this is in fact the smallest rc1 we have had in the 5.x series,” said Linus Torvalds. “And while this is not up there with some larger releases, it’s actually been one of the messier merge windows.”

What only a few know is that Linux 5.15 will be the last major kernel release of the year, which means that it could be the next LTS (Long-Term Support) series, supported for at least a couple of years. Of course, this information needs to be confirmed by Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman.

As mentioned before, the final release of Linux kernel 5.15 is expected on Halloween if Linus Torvalds decided to stick to seven Release Candidates, or on November 7th, if a total of eight RC milestones will be published during the entire development cycle.

Until then, if you want to help the kernel developers find and fix bugs in Linux kernel 5.15, go ahead and download the first Release Candidate from the kernel.org website. When testing it, please keep in mind that this is an early development version, NOT suitable for use on production machines.

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