Linux 6.18-rc7

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 24, 2025,
updated Nov 25, 2025

• LWN ☛ Linux 6.18-rc7

  So the rc6 kernel wasn't great: we had a last-minute core VM
  regression that caused people problems.
  
  
  That's not a great thing late in the release cycle like that, but it
  was a fairly trivial fix, and the cause wasn't some horrid bug, just a
  latent gotcha that happened to then bite a late VM fix. So while not
  great, it also doesn't make me worry about the state of 6.18. We're
  still on track for a final release next weekend unless some big new
  problem rears its ugly head.
  
  
  And rc7 is also a much smaller set of changes than what we had in rc6,
  which again makes me think we're in good shape.
  
  
  The changes here in rc7 look mostly normal: the usual driver updates
  (mainly gpu and networking), some architecture fixes (mainly
  loongarch, mips and arm64), core networking, and some tooling and
  documentation. I say "mostly normal", because there's a selinux patch
  that stands out a bit, but that's mainly due to a variable renaming
  (triggered by a bugfix for a bug that was _due_ to confusion over
  naming).
  
  
  And the usual random one-off fixlets.
  
  
  Summary appended below, let's use this last week of the release to
  make sure we got any random stragglers,
  
  
                    Linus
  

• LWN ☛ Kernel prepatch 6.18-rc7

  Linus has released 6.18-rc7, probably the last -rc before the 6.18 release.

Update

In Neowin:

• Linux 6.18 is almost here, then work begins on extended 6.19 development cycle

  Linus Torvalds has just released GNU/Linux 6.18-rc7, meaning there is likely just one week left until we get the final version.