Last week Linus Torvalds published a fifth release candidate that it was bigger than expected in this week of development, which made him think that that eighth RC reserved for problematic versions would be necessary. With three weeks until the release of the stable version, things could be back to normal, but now there is less time left, since last night He launched Linux 6.1-rc6 and things have not improved.
In the email he sent, he contrasts the fact that he mentions that he still has the eighth RC in mind with that there is nothing that scares him, that is, he is considering delaying the release of the stable version by a week but he is not worried. The truth is that we have never seen Torvalds worry about anything, not even in some emails in which he recalled that sometimes a ninth Release Candidate has been launched.
Linux 6.1 will arrive in December, that's for sure
So here we are at the rc6 and the story hasn't changed - this rc is still a little bigger than I would have preferred, but at the same time there's nothing scary or particularly weird looking here.
Driver changes dominate, with network and gpu drivers (not surprisingly) leading the way, but it's actually quite a mixed bag.
Drivers aside, we have the usual mix of kernel code: architecture updates, some filesystem work, and some kernel and networking.
It's quite easy to review the attached shortlog and get an idea of what's going on. There is absolutely nothing that worries me, other than the fact that there are still quite a few of them. I'm still doubting whether there will be an rc8 or not, leaning a bit towards yes.[…]
What is clear is that Linux 6.1 will arrive in december, but the exact day still remains to be known. If things calm down, it could arrive on December 4, the 11th if it has to be delayed. In the unlikely event that a ninth RC was needed, the stable version would arrive on 18.