And the roller coaster of this amusement park will have ups, downs and suspense until the end. A few hours ago, yesterday afternoon in Spain, Linus Torvalds He launched Linux 5.8-rc7, which should be the latest Release Candidate of the kernel version currently under development. But already in the XNUMXrd RC, the father of Linux began to consider the possibility that it was a release that needed more development.
The doubts are still there. With 7 days remaining to the scheduled date, Torvalds he still doesn't know if he will have to launch that rc8 reserved for kernel versions that have had problems or, as in this case, include many changes. And it is that it ensures that Linux 5.8 modifies about 20% of the code. The most curious thing about all this is that the week started quietly, but the changes that arrived since Friday caused Linux 5.8-rc7 to increase its size considerably.
There could be rc8 from Linux 5.8
Nothing seems that worrisome (the only bigger part is some workarounds to the atomisp driver, and that accounts for a good chunk of rc7's size, both in commits and diff). But it * could * mean that a rc8 is required. It's not like RC7 is * big * big. We have had bigger rc7s. Both 5.3 and 5.5 had bigger rc7s, but only 5.3 ended up with a rc8. Put another way: it could still go either way. We'll see how this goes next week.
Considering the timing, it's more than likely that Linux 5.8 will be the kernel version included in Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla. If all goes well, the launch of the stable version will be this Sunday, August 2. If Torvalds thinks more work is needed, there will be an eighth RC this Sunday, which would mean that the official Linux 5.8 release would be delayed to August 9.