In the last periods of development of a Linux version, the merger window was somewhat hectic, which in the end translated into a few first weeks that forced us to swim a bit against the current. A few hours ago, Linus Torvalds launched Linux 6.3-rc1, the first Release Candidate of the next version of its kernel, and he began his email saying just the opposite, that they have finally had normal ones «two week merge window only«.
This makes everything more pleasant for Torvalds, since the lack of work due to lack of material has not forced him to wait knowing that there are things pending. Thus, the father of Linux feels better, and that has contributed to the fact that there are no problems in his machines, there has been no vacation time or travel. Of course, they still have to make sure everything works.
Linux 6.3 will arrive at the end of April
So I felt pretty good. Of course, the fact that he had no machine problems, no vacations, no trips in the offing, meant he might have noticed a few more "people please write nice commit messages for merges" issues, like this. that there's a possible drawback in that it wasn't in as much of a rush as in the latest merge windows.
And of course, smooth or not, now that the merge window is closed, we need to make sure everything *works*. We've had a couple of exciting mergers already, and I think the fallout has been taken care of, but I'm sure there will be more. Let's hope the 6.3 cooldown works as well as the merge window did… Knock on wood.
If all goes as well as it started, Linux 6.3 will arrive as a stable version on Sunday. April 23. If some more work is needed, the 30th will arrive. In no case will it arrive in time for Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster, which is expected to be uploaded to Linux 6.2 at some point. As data, they recently went up to 6.1, so, although there is still time, it cannot be taken for granted that 6.2 be the 23.04 kernel. In any case, Linux 6.3 has already started development and will arrive in less than two months.