Linux 6 RC1 (Many Updates, UPDATEDx9)
So here we are, two weeks later, and the merge window has closed.UPDATE: Corbet at LWN has a short post.
People are chasing down one active bug, and I'm sure there are others hiding that just need more people to do testing, but that's kind of the point of rc1: all the big changes have been merged, and now we need to calm it down and chase down any problems.
Despite the major number change, there's nothing fundamentally different about this release - I've long eschewed the notion that major numbers are meaningful, and the only reason for a "hierarchical" numbering system is to make the numbers easier to remember and distinguish. Which is why when the minor number gets to around 20 I prefer to just increment the major number instead and reset to something smaller.
"Nothing fundamentally different about this release" obviously doesn't mean there aren't lots of changes, though. There's about 13.5k non-merge commits in here (and 800+ merges), so 6.0 looks to be another fairly sizable release.
I actually was hoping that we'd get some of the first rust infrastructure, and the multi-gen LRU VM, but neither of them happened this time around. There's always more releases. But there's a lot of continued development pretty much all over the place, with the "shortlog" being much too long to post and thus - as always for rc1 notices - below only contains my "merge log". You can definitely get a kind of high-level overview by just scanning that, but obviously it's worth once again pointing out that the people mentioned in the merge log are just the maintainers I pull from, and there's more than 1700 developers involved when you start looking at the full details in the git tree.
And, once again, this is one of those releases where you should not look at the diffstat too closely, because more than half of it is yet another AMD GPU register dump. And the Habanalabs Gaudi2 people want to play in that space too, but they don't reach quite the same lofty results that the AMD GPU people have become so famous for. I'm sure it's just a matter of time.
The CPU people also show up in the JSON files that describe the perf events, but they look absolutely tiny compared to the 'asic_reg' auto-generated GPU and AI hardware definitions.
So just avert your eyes from those parts if you decide that you actually want to look at the diffs themselves. Once you do that, the stats look pretty normal, with roughly 60% driver updates (all over, but gpu, networking and sound are the big updates - again, that's pretty much par for the course). The rest is a mix of arch updates, filesystems, tooling, and just random changes all over.
In all its glory (so all those AMD GPU hardware definitions etc included), it's
13099 files changed, 1280295 insertions(+), 341210 deletions(-)
just because I was curious and looked.
Oh, and after I had already decided to call this kernel 6.0, a few Chinese developers piped up and pointed out that "5.20" is a more wholesome version of the Western "4.20" internet-famous number. So if you want to call this "Linux 5.20", go right ahead. Because the kernel version numbers really are entirely made up and have no intrinsic meaning.
But whatever you call it, please help test this, so that we can get it all in shape for the final release (hopefully early October).
Linus
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Kernel prepatch 6.0-rc1
Linus has released 6.0-rc1 and closed the merge window for this release.
Now Simon Sharwood with his typical clickbait on Torvalds and Linux.
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Linux 6.0 debuts, missing some Rusty bits • The Register
Emperor Penguin Linus Torvalds has released the first release candidate for Linux 6.0, but doesn't mind what you call it.
"After I had already decided to call this kernel 6.0, a few Chinese developers piped up and pointed out that '5.20' is a more wholesome version of the Western '4.20' internet-famous number," he wrote in his announcement that Linux 6.0 rc1 has been released.
"4.20" is a reference to a day on which some celebrate marijuana, while "5.20" does likewise for magic mushrooms.
"So if you want to call this 'Linux 5.20', go right ahead," Torvalds wrote.
"Because the kernel version numbers really are entirely made up and have no intrinsic meaning."
That this week's release has the 6.0 label is still nice to know, as discussion on the Linux kernel mailing list in recent weeks used 5.20 and 6.0 interchangeably.
As The Register has already reported, the release does not make major changes to the kernel but does include many useful updates – such as more RISC-V support, code to drive Intel's Gaudi accelerators, and improved ACPI handling.
And now Marius Nestor.
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Linus Torvalds Announces First Linux Kernel 6.0 Release Candidate - 9to5Linux
Linus Torvalds kicked off the development cycle of the upcoming Linux 6.0 kernel series and announced today the availability of the first Release Candidate (RC) milestone for public testing.
Two weeks have passed since the release of Linux kernel 5.19, which is also the last kernel release in the Linux 5.x series, and the opening of the merge window for Linux kernel 6.0.
Now, the merge window for Linux 6.0 is now officially closed and the first Release Candidate (RC) milestone is ready for testers and bleeding-edge users who want an early taste of what’s about to be included in the final release, which is expected in early October 2022.
An early benchmark.
The slant from Microsoft's booster Liam Tung.
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Linux 6.0 arrives with performance improvements and more Rust coming
Linux creator Linus Torvalds has announced the first release candidate for the Linux kernel version 6.0, but he says the major number change doesn't signify anything especially different about this release.
While there is nothing fundamentally different about this release compared with 5.19, Torvalds noted that there were over 13,500 non-merge commits and over 800 merged commits, meaning "6.0 looks to be another fairly sizable release." According to Torvalds, most of the updates are improvements to the GPU, networking and sound.
Torvalds stuck to his word after releasing Linux kernel 5.19 last month, when he flagged he would likely call the next release 6.0 because he's "starting to worry about getting confused by big numbers again".
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Linux 6.0 Release Candidate Lands, but Linus Insists Version Is Just a Number
A release candidate for the Linux kernel 6.0 has arrived, but Linus Torvalds is downplaying the significance of the version change. Despite this, there are some substantial improvements to the kernel.
[...]
This version is still only a release candidate. Still, expert users can download and compile the kernel themselves. Most users will wait until their distribution packages the final release. Despite Linux kernel development happening at a breakneck pace, Distributions have their own preference for how new their software is. Because Linux kernel improvements often concern security, there is an interest in keeping it up to date.
The development team does maintain a number of older "long-term" kernels for applications requiring stability, such as servers.
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Linux Kernel 6.0 RC1 is out with Run-Time Kernel Verification
Following the Linux Kernel 5.19 released a few days back, Linus released the first release candidate of Linux 6.0 for testing. It officially closes the merge window for this release while you test.
Why 6.0?
Usually, the mainline Kernel version increases by the minor version and this release should have been Kernel 5.20. However, Linus decided to increase the significant version number, hence the Kernel 6.0.
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6.0 Merge window, part 2 [LWN.net]
Linus Torvalds released 6.0-rc1 and closed the merge window on August 14, as expected; by then, 13,543 non-merge changesets had found their way into the mainline repository. Just over half of those were pulled after our first 6.0 merge-window summary was written. The latter part of the merge window tends to be more focused on fixes than new features, but there were still a number of interesting changes added during this time.