Linux 7.2's first release candidate gets off to a good start

Linux 7.2-rc1 is now available. Linus Torvalds said this has been a good release with no big disruptions, suggesting Linux 7.2 will be out on time.

It has been a few weeks since the release of Linux 7.1, and in that time, the Linux 7.2 merge window has been open, where developers can submit their features and patches ready for the upcoming release. That window is now shut, and the release candidate phase has begun so that new features can be tested and further fixes applied.

According to the founder of Linux, Linus Torvalds, this week’s release candidate looks “reasonably normal”. Although we are super early in the release candidates, this is a good sign as it makes it more likely that an eighth release candidate will not be needed.

Torvalds even mentioned that the update’s stats are only larger than they really are because there was another AMD header drop with a third of the patch just being AMD GPU register definitions, which aren’t big changes but make the code contributed look larger overall.

In addition to this, he noted that just over half the patch is drivers, even when excluding the AMD register dump. The rest of the changes are spread out over architecture updates, tooling, documentation, and core kernel updates.

In the next week, Torvalds says that he will be chilling out, taking the week “mostly off”. Despite this, he will be reading emails and keeping up with things, so if he is slow responding, now you know why. He said he is hoping for a calm week, but we will just have to see if the second release candidate is actually like that.

We should expect seven or eight release candidates before Linux 7.2 is released, so expect it around the end of August. If you missed it a few weeks ago, be sure to check out our coverage of Linux 7.1's release.

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Posted Monday 29 June 2026 at 5:43 pm AEST (my time).

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