Linus Torvalds Announces First Linux Kernel 6.17 Release Candidate

posted by Marius Nestor on Aug 10, 2025,
updated Aug 12, 2025

Two weeks have passed since the release of Linux kernel 6.16, which means that Linux 6.17’s merge window is now closed, and the time has come to test drive the Release Candidate (RC) development versions, which will be published every Sunday until the final release in about two months from today.

The final release of Linux kernel 6.17 is expected in late September or early October 2025, which depends on how many Release Candidate (RC) milestones Linus Torvalds will announce. Therefore, we can expect Linux 6.17 to land on September 28th if there are only seven RCs or on October 5th if eight RCs are announced.

Read on

Updated

LWN and Torvalds:

• Linux 6.17-rc1

  So two weeks have passed, and depending on how you see it, rc1 is
  either earlier than usual (it's only Sunday morning back home in the
  usual timezone) or later than usual (because it's getting to be Sunday
  evening here in Finland where I'm cutting the release). I decided to
  basically split the difference on my usual "early Sunday afternoon"
  schedule.
  
  
  Anyway, due to travels, I wanted to do most of the heavy lifting the
  first week, and I can happily report that that part worked out well. I
  wouldn't want to do this most merge windows, but the bulk of the work
  was done before travel, and that meant that the straggler pulls were
  manageable while traveling. Thanks to everybody who got their pulls in
  early - you know who you are.
  
  
  And the late stragglers then got a slightly more annoyed Linus as a
  result. Sorry about that.
  
  
  Anyway, the merge window did end up looking fairly healthy, despite me
  having to go through a couple of bisections for trouble spots (one
  during travels with a laptop - not optimal, but thankfully it was at
  least one of the "reliable symptoms that bisect right to the culprit"
  kind). The stats look pretty normal both in patch size and in number
  of commits. That number being large enough that - as always - you only
  get the mergelog below as a kind of "view from 10,000ft" of the
  development process this time around.
  
  
  Please do get started testing and fixing,
  
  
                Linus
  

• Kernel prepatch 6.17-rc1 [LWN.net]

  Linus has released 6.17-rc1 and closed the merge window for this development cycle.

Neowin:

• Travel, stragglers, and a healthy merge window for Linux 6.17-rc1

  Linus Torvalds has closed the Linux 6.17 merge window and pushed the first release candidate. GNU/Linux 6.17 should go stable around the end of September or early October.