Although every piece of software that is developed is different, Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, often expects the weeks in which he releases Release Candidates to follow a pattern. In the first you can expect anything, in second the size is small and the changes and the noise usually appear in the third week. That is something that has not happened this time: Linux 5.13-rc3 It has been released in a calmer week than you might expect.
The Finnish developer says it is the smallest rc3 they've had since the jump to number 5. Torvalds is surprised, but finds an explanation: there are probably people who have not sent their corrections in the last week, so the interesting thing, in terms of number of changes and news, should arrive next Sunday the 30th.
Linux 5.13-rc3 is the smallest rc3 out of 5.x
Hmm. rc3 is when the other shoe normally drops, and we start to get a lot more fixes for the melt window drop. This time it is not so. It's been a very quiet rc3 week, and at least in sheer number of commits this is the smallest rc3 we've had in the 5.x series. Considering that the merge window was not at all small, this is a bit surprising, but I suspect it is one of those "not everyone sent fixes this week" things that will be rectified next week. I don't have any network pulls this week, for example.
Torvalds doesn't seem concerned about Linux 5.13-rc3 being "overdue" in size, but I think things should get back on track in the next few weeks or else we'll see rc8 again this time. If in the end I'm wrong, the stable version of Linux 5.13 will arrive on June 27.