When Linus Torvalds released the second Release Candidate of the kernel version currently in development, we said that the news was that there was no news. There was none because its launch fell again on Sunday and because its size was the usual in rc2, and this week there is no prominent news again as for the Linux 5.4-rc3 release. At the moment, everything is going as expected.
Torvaldas mentions past versions to compare them with Linux 5.4-rc3 and verify that it is bigger than rc2 of this version but, in general, Linux kernel v5.4 is being smaller than past releases, such as 5.3 released in September and which is the one chosen to appear in Ubuntu 19.10 Eoan Ermine which will be released in three days we go!).
Linux 5.4 is being smaller than past versions
Things continue to look pretty normal, with the rc3 being larger than the rc2 as people are starting to find more regressions, but so far 5.4 remains on the smaller side of recent releases.
The father of Linux explains the increase in the size of this release with something he has already done before: in the first RC, development begins, in the second it is polished a bit in the third is when they begin to find faults and regressions. It is what usually happens and what has happened this week, but it did not happen like that in other releases.
Regarding the changes that have been introduced in this version, little news too: they have removed some drivers, others have been modified, architectures have been updated and, in which they have focused more than usual, file systems, such as btrfs, cifs, nfs, ocfs, xfs and some kernel fixes in vfs.
Linux 5.4 will not be as important an update as September 5.3, but it will include the Lockdown security module that will not be liked by everyone. His launch will occur at the end of November or early December.