In the past week saw to a rather pessimistic Linus Torvalds given how things were at the time, and he began to talk about the almost certainty, rather than probability, that an eighth release candidate would be necessary for the version of the kernel he is currently developing. A few hours ago launched Linux 6.2-rc6 and we are almost at the opposite extreme, although it is not entirely clear how it has been possible to improve so much in just 8 days.
The previous RC was released on a Saturday, so there was one day less work, and this Linux 6.2-rc6 has been released again on a Sunday, so it has had one more day. I don't know if this had anything to do with it, but Torvalds says that rc6 is "suspiciously small", although he's not one to look a gift horse in the tooth. is optimistic and is hopeful that this is not an anomaly, but that things have begun to take shape.
It is still thought that Linux 6.2 will arrive on February 19
He's suspiciously small, but on a gift horse who am I to look him in the tooth? I'll accept it and hope it's not an aberration, but a sign that 6.2 is taking good shape. Call me optimistic, call me naive, but let's enjoy it and hope the trend continues.
The diffstat also looks pretty normal, with various driver fixes (network, gpu, i2c, and x86 platform drivers stand out) and netfilter fixes leading the way. But there are also the usual architecture updates, random filesystem fixes, and whatnot. The summary is attached for those who want to take a look at the detailed summary.
I've mentioned this a couple of times before: even though the rc6 is nice and small, I'm hoping to drag the 6.2 down to an rc8 just because of time wasted on vacation. But I'll be much happier if we can *keep* the remaining rc's nice and small. Agree?
If things improve a lot, in two weeks we will have a stable version, but the last paragraph of the note says that expects it to be necessary to launch the eighth RC due to the slowdown of the winter holidays. As we have already mentioned on different occasions, this will be the kernel that Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster will use.