There have been no surprises. After several consecutive weeks in which the developing kernel was larger than normal and it did not reduce its sizeLinus Torvalds has had to throw Linux 6.1-rc8. The good thing is that, finally, everything has started to look normal. Over the last week things have started to calm down, and that's exactly what these rc8s are used for, to let the weather do its thing.
From Torvalds' words, although there is nothing that worries him anymore, we can understand that that rc9 that has been seen on a few occasions has not yet been ruled out. The father of Linux hope next week will be calm "or calmer", but if there is something strange, the launch would have to be delayed another week. With everything that has happened, we are now at the point where we usually are in an rc7: next Sunday there could be stable… or not. Although the latter is a personal impression.
There will be Linux 6.1 on December 11... or not
We've finally started to calm down, and the rc8 is noticeably smaller than previous build candidates.
So it's all looking good, and while the calm may have come later than you'd like, it has. Let's hope next week is just as quiet (or more so).
The changes are sparse enough that a look at the log below gives you an idea of what's happened, but they're basically small changes scattered all over the place. There is nothing that catches my attention.
next sunday day December 11 The stable version of Linux 6.1 should arrive. This is expected to be the 2022 LTS release as it former it was Linux 5.15, from October 2021. As always, remember that Ubuntu users interested in installing it when the time comes must do so on their own. Ubuntu 23.04 should arrive with Linux 6.2.