Linux 7.0 development stabilizes as Linus Torvalds reports calmer fifth release candidate

After a hectic start to the Linux 7.0 cycle, the latest RC5 release shows signs of stability despite being larger than previous development stages.

For the first several weeks of the Linux 7.0 development cycle, Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux, said that the first few weeks of development were unusually hectic, threatening the timely release of Linux 7.0. As of the fifth release candidate, which just came out, things seem to be simmering down a bit.

Providing a comment on the state of things this week, Torvalds said things have calmed down a bit this week, but it is still larger than what you’d expect at this point. Despite this, the founder is still taking this as a good sign.

For anyone that doesn’t obsess over Linux kernel release cycles, they usually see two weeks of merging new features before going through seven weeks of testing to ensure stability. Sometimes, things get so disrupted that an eighth week of testing is needed, and it is possible we were heading towards that this time around due to the unusually large size of the updates.

With things calming in the latter half of the cycle, it reduces that chance that the development cycle will be pushed out an extra week, which is good for users as it will mean support for newer hardware faster. With that said, it will still take time for distributions to deliver the new kernel to users.

According to Torvalds, this week’s patches were made up mostly by driver updates to GPU and networking. Outside of drivers, this week brought updates for core networking, filesystems, BPF, selftests, and architecture fixes.

If there are seven release candidates, the final version will arrive on April 12. However, according to average time of development predictions, an eighth release candidate and April 19 release is more likely, despite what Torvalds has said.

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Posted Monday 23 March 2026 at 5:23 pm AEST (my time).

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