As expected, this afternoon, at the last minute in Spain, Linus Torvalds launched Linux 5.3-rc1. In the words of the "father of Linux", it is a fairly large release, so much so that it is the second largest in the history of the kernels it develops. Larger than this version has only been another first Release Candidate, more specifically that of Linux 4.9. The newly released version is slightly larger than Linux 4.12, 4.15, and 4.19, versions that Linus uses as a reference for this release.
Torvalds says that, beyond the size and the "rocky" beginning, everything has gone quite smooth, especially towards the end of the "merge window". As always in every first Release Candidate, there is a lot of work ahead and Linus does not mention many concrete things in his briefing note this week, but it is already known that Linux 5.3 will arrive with many news.
Linux 5.3 will support newer MacBook keyboards and trackpads
What Torvalds does mention is that at the beginning of the "merge window" there were some problems, like a couple of bugs that he had to fix in the first two days, which is not a good sign:
That is never a good sign since I don't tend to do anything particularly strange, and if I find bugs it means that the code was not tested well enough. In one case it was my fault when using a simplified configuration that had not been tested, and caused a strange problem appeared - it can happen. But in the other case, actually it was a code that was too recent and too harsh and had not cooked enough. The first was fixed, the second was reversed.
Among the most outstanding novelties that will arrive with Linux 5.3 we have to will support the latest Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboards and trackpads.
