Linux 6.18-rc6

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 17, 2025

• LWN ☛ Linux 6.18-rc6

  So we have a slightly larger rc6 than usual, but I think it's just the
  random noise and a result of pull request timings rather than due to
  any issues with the release. But I guess we have a couple of weeks
  remaining to find out....
  
  
  The fixes are all over the place, and nothing stands out, except for
  how it really is pretty varied. It's all small one- and few-liners,
  with the biggest patches all being to the selftests rather than actual
  kernel code. In fact, the selftests account for over a quarter of the
  rc6 patch.
  
  
  Outside of the selftests, drivers account for (only) a quarter of the
  rest of the changes - again, I think this is more a sign of pull
  request timings rather than anything else, and the reason rc6 is on
  the larger side is just that we ended up having a number of varied
  fixes pulls just happen to come in this week.
  
  
  Another quarter of the kernel changes is from architecture fixes
  (arm64, loongarch and x86), and the rest is really pretty mixed random
  stuff (networking, bpf, core kernel, filesystems, core VM - just a
  little bit of everything).
  
  
  Shortlog with the detailed overview appended below as usual,
  
  
                   Linus
  

• LWN ☛ Kernel prepatch 6.18-rc6 [LWN.net]

  Linus has released 6.18-rc6 for testing. ""So we have a slightly larger rc6 than usual, but I think it's just the random noise and a result of pull request timings rather than due to any issues with the release. But I guess we have a couple of weeks remaining to find out.""