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Linux 7.3-rc4
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LWN ☛ Linux 7.3-rc4
We all know the drill by now: "it's big, yadda yadda".
What I do find a bit interesting is that filesystems continue to be quite a noticeable part of the whole "it's bigger than usual". This time around it's smb and ntfs, so it's not like it's one particular filesystem, it's just been that filesystems in general seem to have been getting more attention recently.
Of course, driver changes are still the biggest part, but not as dominatingly as they sometimes are. The patch overall seems to be about a third drivers, a third filesystems and networking, and a third "misc" (architecture fixes and tooling).
But it's mostly pretty small patches. I think the biggest single patch in here is a removal of a file that was moved from lib/ to mm/ during the merge window, but for some reason the the old copy stayed around and got this belated removal patch.
You can see the shortlog below for details, but nothing strikes me as _particularly_ interesting. There's a lot of error path cleanup stuff, which various LLM's seem to be pretty good at catching, but that typically isn't going to be all that noticeable in normal use. But hey, if any of the issues hit *you*, you are going to care.
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LWN ☛ Kernel prepatch 7.3-rc4
Linus Torvalds has released the 7.3-rc4 kernel prepatch. It is, unsurprisingly at this point, large: ""We all know the drill by now: 'it's big, yadda yadda'"".
Neowin:
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Linux 7.3-rc4 arrives with heavier filesystem patches
Reaching the halfway point in the development cycle, the update features heavy storage component adjustments for NTFS and SMB alongside routine architecture fixes. Read more...
Some more:
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Linux Kernel 7.3 RC4 Released: Bigger Than Usual With LLM Bug Fixes
Linus Torvalds has announced the fourth release candidate (RC4) for the upcoming Linux Kernel 7.3 version on 20 September 2026. In the Linux 7.3-rc4 announcement mail, he noted that the release candidate size remains noticeably larger than normal for this stage of the kernel cycle.
The rc4 brings great progress. Developers fixed many edge-case bugs and cleaned up important subsystems across the codebase.
Here are the key technical highlights and trends from Linux 7.3-rc4: [...]