After a series of release candidates, Linus Torvalds could well be ready to unleash version 4.16 of the Linux kernel onto the world at the weekend. That is unless he changes his mind about the RC build:
After a series of release candidates, Linus Torvalds could well be ready to unleash version 4.16 of the Linux kernel onto the world at the weekend. That is unless he changes his mind about the RC build: «rc7 is much too big for my taste,» he says in his weekly update to the kernel mailing list.
Torvalds says that while he’s not planning for there to be an eighth release candidate, the current size is causing him to think about the best course of action. For those who have not been following the story, he also details what’s new in Linux 4.16.
As well as driver updates, a big part of the update relates to networking, and there are «gpu, pinctrl, rdma, iio, and misc other fixes.» He also says that the build includes «documentation, arch updates (mainly x86, but some mips noise too), some mm fixes, selftests, and misc random things.»
In his mailing list update Torvalds says that «by this time in the release, things should have calmed down more than they apparently have.» He goes on to explain:
But what’s the reason for the apparent bloated size with this build?
Torvalds then goes on to concede: » Ok, the actual largest patch in there is a fix for hyperv network device detach events, but the Ppro one happened to jump out at me.»
The long and the short of it is that version 4.16 of the Linux kernel is probably going to be released in under a week.
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