Linux 6.16-rc1 is out: What's new and what does it mean for your system?

Linus Torvalds, head and founder of the Linux kernel, has announced the closure of the merge window where major new features are added to the kernel, and the beginning of the Linux 6.16 release candidates, beginning with release candidate 1 (Linux 6.16-rc1). Linux 6.15 was released two weeks ago and in the time since, developers have had the opportunity to try and get their new kernel features into the Linux 6.16 kernel.

Over the next two months, we will get seven or eight release candidates where developers will stabilize new and existing features. This means that the stable version of Linux 6.16 will arrive around the end of July.

Torvalds said that the merge window seemed pretty normal this time, but did say he had a feeling that there were more “late straggler” pull requests than is typical. Despite this, everything seems to be fine and the schedule will be going forward as planned.

Key areas of development

Torvalds explained that around half of the changes in the first release candidate were driver updates, with the bulk of those being made up with by GPU and networking drivers. For end users these are the most important changes because when your favorite distribution of Linux ships a new release with this kernel, it will support more graphics cards and networking equipment like Wi-Fi cards.

The non-driver updates in this version are split between architecture-specific updates, documentation and tooling (perf tool and selftests), and core changes to filesystems, core kernel, memory management, and networking. Torvalds said the core changes include some of the “most important” changes, though they’re not necessarily major changes. Fixes to the core ensure a more stable Linux kernel for end users, plus better performance.

The merge window saw developers submit thousands of non-merge commits and merges. The non-merge commits were around 13,000 while the merge commits nearly reached 1,000. There were 1,783 unique authors submitting code during this window.

Next steps

Over the coming weeks, Linux developers, including individuals or representatives of companies, will submit bug fixes for new and existing features. This release candidate cycle will run until around the end of July and then the final version will become available.

End users shouldn’t go out and download Linux 6.16 when it’s released, instead just wait for your Linux distribution to update to it, as distribution-specific changes get made. Neowin will be following these releases and reporting on any interested changes that are noted.

Source: LKML

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