There is no longer any doubt: yes has been Linux 5.4-rc8 this week. And it is that seven days ago, Linus Torvalds said that it was not very clear if there was going to be an eighth Release Candidate of this version of the Linux kernel or would directly launch the stable version. Apparently, the father of Linux has had doubts until the last minute, but decided to launch it because there is no problem in launching one more RC considering that the development of Linux 5.4 took a while to calm down.
Torvalds hopes that the next requests already have to do with v5.5 of the Linux kernel. Also, Thanksgiving week is coming up in the United States, so everything should be very calm and there should be stable version next Sunday, November 24. Only a disaster would prevent Linux 5.4 from being released this weekend.
Linux 5.4 is coming November 24
Most of the work done on rc8 is related to Intel issues, both from the CPU (TSX Async Abort and iTLB) and from the GPU. Neither of these patches are too large, so it shouldn't cause a problem for anyone. Another important change is that the file system has been removed vbox.sf, in part because it stopped working as it should. It will probably be available again as expected in Linux 5.5.
Nothing seems that worrisome from a launch point of view, and as i mentioned i was playing around with just skipping this rc entirely. But it's better to prevent than to cure. Please give the tires some final kicks before next weekend's highly anticipated 5.4 release.
Linux 5.4 will be a version of the Linux kernel that will not include as many enhancements as v5.2 and v5.3, but it will be the first to include the security module Lockdown. It will arrive disabled by default.