#linux-7-2 — Public Fediverse posts

Linux 7.2 RC7 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC6 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

Another week, another -rc.

I can't say that I'm exactly thrilled about the size of this all, but it is what it is: the new normal with a lot of fixes, many of them due to review by various AI tools.

And nothing looks particularly scary per se - it's just that there's a lot here. Most of it is fairly small, although we have a couple of larger diffs: s390/zcrypt fixes stand out in the diffstat, and so does btrfs bringing back the fixup worker infrastructure. And some netfilter ipset fixes.

But aside from a few places like that, most of this is just lots of tiny fixes. It's pretty much spread all over - drivers (gpu, sound, networking, you name it), filesystems, core networking, arch code..

I don't currently see any value in delaying the 7.2 release, so I would expect that to happen next weekend unless something really bad pops up.

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC7 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC6 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

Another week, another -rc.

I can't say that I'm exactly thrilled about the size of this all, but it is what it is: the new normal with a lot of fixes, many of them due to review by various AI tools.

And nothing looks particularly scary per se - it's just that there's a lot here. Most of it is fairly small, although we have a couple of larger diffs: s390/zcrypt fixes stand out in the diffstat, and so does btrfs bringing back the fixup worker infrastructure. And some netfilter ipset fixes.

But aside from a few places like that, most of this is just lots of tiny fixes. It's pretty much spread all over - drivers (gpu, sound, networking, you name it), filesystems, core networking, arch code..

I don't currently see any value in delaying the 7.2 release, so I would expect that to happen next weekend unless something really bad pops up.

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC7 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the seventh (and the last) release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 and other supported Linux version series were receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

We are currently closer to the stable version, because a stable version of Linux usually gets released after seven release candidates. When the seventh release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made since the sixth release candidate:

• HWMON fixes for Linux 7.2 RC7
• Added support for Zenaim Leverless gaming controller for fighting games
• PTDUMP use-after-free fixes
• Various improvements made to the seventh release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC7 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC7 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the seventh (and the last) release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 and other supported Linux version series were receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

We are currently closer to the stable version, because a stable version of Linux usually gets released after seven release candidates. When the seventh release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made since the sixth release candidate:

• HWMON fixes for Linux 7.2 RC7
• Added support for Zenaim Leverless gaming controller for fighting games
• PTDUMP use-after-free fixes
• Various improvements made to the seventh release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC7 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC6 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC6 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

Hmm. This rc is huge.  Even by the "new normal" standards this is a big rc, and I think it's the biggest rc6 we've had in years at least by commit count.

The stats don't look particularly strange: it's just under 60% drivers, 20% networking, and 20% "rest" (arch, tooling, filesystems - nothing particularly odd). And that driver side is the usual gpu and networking drivers, but not exclusively so - we have sound, spi, ata etc in there too.

So a lot of networking stuff, which is at least partly the whole continued backlog from conference timing. I hope that's all there is to this, but it is a bit unnerving how bit the changes are at this point, even if nothing in here actually looks all that strange.

There's nothing in here that screams "bad" or implies that the release needs delaying, but I sure hope we calm down for the remaining two weeks.

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC6 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC6 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

Hmm. This rc is huge.  Even by the "new normal" standards this is a big rc, and I think it's the biggest rc6 we've had in years at least by commit count.

The stats don't look particularly strange: it's just under 60% drivers, 20% networking, and 20% "rest" (arch, tooling, filesystems - nothing particularly odd). And that driver side is the usual gpu and networking drivers, but not exclusively so - we have sound, spi, ata etc in there too.

So a lot of networking stuff, which is at least partly the whole continued backlog from conference timing. I hope that's all there is to this, but it is a bit unnerving how bit the changes are at this point, even if nothing in here actually looks all that strange.

There's nothing in here that screams "bad" or implies that the release needs delaying, but I sure hope we calm down for the remaining two weeks.

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC6 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the sixth release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 and other supported Linux version series were receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

We are currently closer to the stable version, because a stable version of Linux usually gets released after seven release candidates. When the fifth release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made since the fifth release candidate:

• Fixed some AMD Zen 5 CPUs being recognized as Zen 6 CPUs
• Some Western Digital SATA Drives should work properly with driver fixes
• Some more sound fixes for more devices
• Various improvements made to the sixth release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC6 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC6 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the sixth release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 and other supported Linux version series were receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

We are currently closer to the stable version, because a stable version of Linux usually gets released after seven release candidates. When the fifth release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made since the fifth release candidate:

• Fixed some AMD Zen 5 CPUs being recognized as Zen 6 CPUs
• Some Western Digital SATA Drives should work properly with driver fixes
• Some more sound fixes for more devices
• Various improvements made to the sixth release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC6 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC5 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC5 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

It's Sunday afternoon, and once more we have quite a massive -rc5.

The same thing happened in 7.1, so part of it is just the "new normal". But I think this time the bigger part of it is that the networking tree ended up having some pent up work from the previous week due to conference distractions. So over a third of the patch is networking, although the bulk of that is obviously on the driver side.

There are all the usual other drivers in here too, although for a change there are more USB changes than GPU drivers. So that's something.  But there's a little bit of everything on the driver side (sound, tty, block, firewire - you get the idea).

And then there's everything else: tooling (selftest and perf), fielsystems (smb, btrfs), rust and arch fixes, documentation...

So it's a bit too big for my liking, but nothing in there strikes me as particularly strange or scary.

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC5 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC5 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

It's Sunday afternoon, and once more we have quite a massive -rc5.

The same thing happened in 7.1, so part of it is just the "new normal". But I think this time the bigger part of it is that the networking tree ended up having some pent up work from the previous week due to conference distractions. So over a third of the patch is networking, although the bulk of that is obviously on the driver side.

There are all the usual other drivers in here too, although for a change there are more USB changes than GPU drivers. So that's something.  But there's a little bit of everything on the driver side (sound, tty, block, firewire - you get the idea).

And then there's everything else: tooling (selftest and perf), fielsystems (smb, btrfs), rust and arch fixes, documentation...

So it's a bit too big for my liking, but nothing in there strikes me as particularly strange or scary.

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC5 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the fifth release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 was receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

We are currently halfway to the stable version, because a stable version of Linux usually gets released after seven release candidates. When the fifth release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made, including the sound fixes, since the fourth release candidate:

• Fixing silent streams with the Intel HDMI keep-alive silent mode. This fixes code added back in 2022 for Alder Lake and DG2/Alchemist hardware.
• A fix for detecting the internal digital microphone on the AMD-powered MSI Vector A16 HX A8WIG laptop.
• Adding some new Sound Open Firmware quirks for new Dell XPS Wildcat Lake and Dell XPS Panther Lake models to enable the sidecar amp configuration.
• The HP ZBook 8 G2a laptop needs an inverted LED quirk handling for opposite speaker mute LED polarity.
• A fixed rate quirk for the JBL Quantum650 Wireless headset.
• More pop noise quirks for the Dell Pro QC1255.
• A quirk for the HP EliteBook 830 G8 (8AB8) to enable the mute LED.
• Fixing speakers on the Lunnen Ground 14.
• Fixing speakers on the Alienware x16 R2.
• Fixing some ASUS TUF ACP70-based systems like the TUF Gaming Vivobook 18 and TUF Gaming A14 FA401EA so the SoundWire driver is properly loaded on those platforms.
• A quirk for the HP Pavilion x360 to deal with silent output.
• Various improvements made to the fourth release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC4 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC5 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the fifth release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 was receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

We are currently halfway to the stable version, because a stable version of Linux usually gets released after seven release candidates. When the fifth release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made, including the sound fixes, since the fourth release candidate:

• Fixing silent streams with the Intel HDMI keep-alive silent mode. This fixes code added back in 2022 for Alder Lake and DG2/Alchemist hardware.
• A fix for detecting the internal digital microphone on the AMD-powered MSI Vector A16 HX A8WIG laptop.
• Adding some new Sound Open Firmware quirks for new Dell XPS Wildcat Lake and Dell XPS Panther Lake models to enable the sidecar amp configuration.
• The HP ZBook 8 G2a laptop needs an inverted LED quirk handling for opposite speaker mute LED polarity.
• A fixed rate quirk for the JBL Quantum650 Wireless headset.
• More pop noise quirks for the Dell Pro QC1255.
• A quirk for the HP EliteBook 830 G8 (8AB8) to enable the mute LED.
• Fixing speakers on the Lunnen Ground 14.
• Fixing speakers on the Alienware x16 R2.
• Fixing some ASUS TUF ACP70-based systems like the TUF Gaming Vivobook 18 and TUF Gaming A14 FA401EA so the SoundWire driver is properly loaded on those platforms.
• A quirk for the HP Pavilion x360 to deal with silent output.
• Various improvements made to the fourth release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC4 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC4 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC4 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

This whole week I had the feeling that people were starting to go on summer vacation, but running the numbers shows that I must have been wrong - it all looks pretty normal.

And by "pretty normal" I obviously mean the "new normal" with a fair number of fixes all over. It's not a small rc4.

The stats look pretty normal too, with most of it being small one- and few-liners. There's a couple of bigger fixes (can/bcm stands out for syzbot and sashiko fixes, and the selftests get some extra tests too that show up in the diffs), but nothing that looks odd. There's some larger amd gpu noise, but the size of that is largely some code movement and extra comments - and nothing like the occasional big header drops...

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC4 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC4 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

This whole week I had the feeling that people were starting to go on summer vacation, but running the numbers shows that I must have been wrong - it all looks pretty normal.

And by "pretty normal" I obviously mean the "new normal" with a fair number of fixes all over. It's not a small rc4.

The stats look pretty normal too, with most of it being small one- and few-liners. There's a couple of bigger fixes (can/bcm stands out for syzbot and sashiko fixes, and the selftests get some extra tests too that show up in the diffs), but nothing that looks odd. There's some larger amd gpu noise, but the size of that is largely some code movement and extra comments - and nothing like the occasional big header drops...

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC4 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the fourth release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 was receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

We are currently halfway to the stable version, because a stable version of Linux usually gets released after seven release candidates. When the fourth release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made since the third release candidate:

• Various improvements made to the fourth release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC4 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC4 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the fourth release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 was receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

We are currently halfway to the stable version, because a stable version of Linux usually gets released after seven release candidates. When the fourth release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made since the third release candidate:

• Various improvements made to the fourth release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC4 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC3 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC3 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

Things continue to look normal (the "new normal" with slightly higher rates of commits, although I do get the feeling that we're seeing that slightly balanced out by people starting to go on summer vacation).

About half the changes are to drivers - spread all over. Yes, there's GPU and networking as always, but there's a fair amount of other misc driver noise too.

The rest is similarly spread out: networking and filesystems are the biggest areas, but we have some documentation fixes (ok, some of it is just a pure re-indent), some core kernel, some architecture fixes, and various tooling fixes.

Nothing looks particularly scary or strange.

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC3 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC3 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

Things continue to look normal (the "new normal" with slightly higher rates of commits, although I do get the feeling that we're seeing that slightly balanced out by people starting to go on summer vacation).

About half the changes are to drivers - spread all over. Yes, there's GPU and networking as always, but there's a fair amount of other misc driver noise too.

The rest is similarly spread out: networking and filesystems are the biggest areas, but we have some documentation fixes (ok, some of it is just a pure re-indent), some core kernel, some architecture fixes, and various tooling fixes.

Nothing looks particularly scary or strange.

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC3 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the third release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 was receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

When the second release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made since the first release candidate:

• Display detection code has been improved so that the x86 VGA display fallback code is fixed. The default VGA selection code has been improved because, on some systems where multiple graphics cards have been installed, might have a VGA compatible device but not actually used for display, resulting in multiple displays being a “boot display” according to the attribute, confusing userspace.
• Various improvements made to the third release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC3 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC3 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the third release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 was receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

When the second release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made since the first release candidate:

• Display detection code has been improved so that the x86 VGA display fallback code is fixed. The default VGA selection code has been improved because, on some systems where multiple graphics cards have been installed, might have a VGA compatible device but not actually used for display, resulting in multiple displays being a “boot display” according to the attribute, confusing userspace.
• Various improvements made to the third release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC3 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC2 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC2 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

It's Sunday afternoon, and rc2 is out. Things look very normal - it's not a small rc2, but it's in line with recent releases, and slightly smaller than rc2 was in 7.1. Let's see how that all continues, but so far so good.

The diffstat looks normal too, with about half the patch being drivers - the usual suspects accounting for the bulk of it. The rest being spread all over (but mostly filesystems and networking).

The only slightly unusual thing is the header file split where mod_devicetable.h was split into multiple smaller per-subsystem device-id headers, which is how it should always have been done, but wasn't. It's a cleanup, but it also means that we have one fewer of those monster headers that causes almost everything to be recompiled if you touch it - even when the changes are relevant only to a few small files.

Anyway, that shows up in the diffstat, but is hopefully not really visible any other way as all the users hopefully got updates properly. Knock wood.

Shortlog appended for your pleasure - easy enough to scrool through to get a quick feel for the kinds of things that have been going on. Nothing really stands out..

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC2 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC2 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

It's Sunday afternoon, and rc2 is out. Things look very normal - it's not a small rc2, but it's in line with recent releases, and slightly smaller than rc2 was in 7.1. Let's see how that all continues, but so far so good.

The diffstat looks normal too, with about half the patch being drivers - the usual suspects accounting for the bulk of it. The rest being spread all over (but mostly filesystems and networking).

The only slightly unusual thing is the header file split where mod_devicetable.h was split into multiple smaller per-subsystem device-id headers, which is how it should always have been done, but wasn't. It's a cleanup, but it also means that we have one fewer of those monster headers that causes almost everything to be recompiled if you touch it - even when the changes are relevant only to a few small files.

Anyway, that shows up in the diffstat, but is hopefully not really visible any other way as all the users hopefully got updates properly. Knock wood.

Shortlog appended for your pleasure - easy enough to scrool through to get a quick feel for the kinds of things that have been going on. Nothing really stands out..

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC2 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the second release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 was receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

When the second release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made since the first release candidate:

• Linux 7.2 RC2 will raise the RISC-V CPU core limit to 256 cores from 64 cores. This impacts static memory allocations and slightly increases kernel memory consumption. This was done at the request of SpacemiT as the RVA23 RISC-V server has been produced, which utilizes 128 cores in the SG2042-based Sophgo Pisces CPU. This core limit increase is applied to 64-bit builds for the new firmware. This doesn’t apply to older firmware.
• The BPF code in the kernel has been hardened against JIT spraying attacks. This increases security, as the indirect branch predictors now get flushed before reusing the JIT code.
• Various improvements made to the second release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC2 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC2 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to complete the release candidate cycle with the second release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 was receiving updates to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

When the second release candidate gets released, you’ll be able to experience some of the changes made since the first release candidate:

• Linux 7.2 RC2 will raise the RISC-V CPU core limit to 256 cores from 64 cores. This impacts static memory allocations and slightly increases kernel memory consumption. This was done at the request of SpacemiT as the RVA23 RISC-V server has been produced, which utilizes 128 cores in the SG2042-based Sophgo Pisces CPU. This core limit increase is applied to 64-bit builds for the new firmware. This doesn’t apply to older firmware.
• The BPF code in the kernel has been hardened against JIT spraying attacks. This increases security, as the indirect branch predictors now get flushed before reusing the JIT code.
• Various improvements made to the second release candidate

Release candidate versions of Linux are available in the source code form, and you can build the kernel for your system so that you can try it out and report any bugs that manifest, especially with new hardware.

Linux 7.2 RC2 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC1 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC1 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

So two weeks have passed, and the merge window is closed. Things look reasonably normal for this release (knock wood), and I'm appending my merge shortlog below, since we obviously have much to many changes to list individually.

The stats look pretty normal, although another AMD header drop means that a third of the patch is just various AMD GPU register definitions.

That's not unusual in itself, and if you ignore that part the rest looks pretty normal too: just over half the patch is drivers (even when _not_ counting that AMD register dump, other GPU driver changes show up, but we've got a little bit of everything in there), with the rest being the usual spread of architecture updates, tooling, documentation, and core kernel updates.

I'm going to take the next week mostly off, but I'm reading email and keeping up with things. But I hope it's going to be a fairly calm week. If I have longer latencies than usual, you'll know why.

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC1 released!

After the release of Linux 7.1, which brought many features and improvements across different portions of the Linux kernel, such as hardware support and other improvements, an upcoming version of Linux is in the works.

Linux 7.2 RC1 is now live for developers and power users who are willing to try out a pre-release version of Linux that is yet to be released. All the interesting changes from performance improvements to bug fixes have been integrated to this release candidate, including, but not limited to:

• PCIe devices should not inadvertently reduce its speed to 2.5 GT/s
• Improved performance for AMD EPYC Sorano
• Added support for Wacom W9000 pen-enabled touchscreen
• Dropped ancient PROFIBUS driver ported from SCO Unix
• Bug fixes and minor improvements made to NTFS3 driver
• Startup overhead has been reduced for RISC-V
• USB4STREAM has been added to quickly send data between USB4 connected devices
• Preparations for NVIDIA Blackwell-Next devices
• Networking improvements and support for Wi-Fi 8 (UHR)
• Apple M3 systems can now boot to Linux 7.2
• AppleTalk protocol support has been dropped
• Various bug fixes and general improvements

The below announcement from Linus Torvalds in the mailing list says:

So two weeks have passed, and the merge window is closed. Things look reasonably normal for this release (knock wood), and I'm appending my merge shortlog below, since we obviously have much to many changes to list individually.

The stats look pretty normal, although another AMD header drop means that a third of the patch is just various AMD GPU register definitions.

That's not unusual in itself, and if you ignore that part the rest looks pretty normal too: just over half the patch is drivers (even when _not_ counting that AMD register dump, other GPU driver changes show up, but we've got a little bit of everything in there), with the rest being the usual spread of architecture updates, tooling, documentation, and core kernel updates.

I'm going to take the next week mostly off, but I'm reading email and keeping up with things. But I hope it's going to be a fairly calm week. If I have longer latencies than usual, you'll know why.

Linux v7.2 will be the third version from the v7.x series that will be released after Linux 7.1, which will bring many improvements and additions to enhance your user experience.

Arch Linux and other distributions will be updated to utilize Linux 7.2 once it officially releases to the public, with rolling distros being updated first, then the subsequent distributions will utilize this version of Linux according to the distro’s release schedule. Meanwhile, keep checking for updates in your Linux distro (such as pacman -Syu as root in Arch Linux), or compile it from source.

Please note that, if you’re going to try out this pre-release version of Linux, be sure that it might contain more bugs than the final release, as it’s an experimental version not intended for production use. We advise you to back up all critical data before you utilize this version.

To download Linux 7.2’s source code, click on the below button:

Linux 7.2 RC1 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to start the release candidate cycle with the first release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 was released two weeks ago as a stable release, which got two updates afterwards to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

When the first release candidate gets released, we will provide you with more complete changelogs, but here are three of the most striking changes done in this version of Linux:

• Performance for AMD EPYC Sorano has seen a massive increase in several areas, including localhost network processing and stress tests. This test was performed on an AMD EPYC 8635P processor with 84 cores and 168 threads, and TCP and QUIC protocol benchmarks show increased performance in Linux 7.2 over the stable release of Linux 7.1.
• Linux 7.2 has seen some deprecations and removals when it comes to very old drivers and code, including the Hercules Monochrome graphics cards that are more than 40 years old, the ancient AppleTalk protocol, and some more remnants of i486 platform code as they age.
• Linux 7.2 also gets prepared for many networking hardware, including Neighbor Awareness Networking (Wi-Fi Aware) for securely discovering and pairing with other devices without relying on traditional routers, Bluetooth, or an internet connection. It also brings support for Wi-Fi 8 (802.11bn), which is an Ultra High Reliability (UHR) standard that focuses on reliability rather than speed.

Linux 7.2 RC1 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 RC1 is expected to release this week

This week, Linux 7.2 is expected to start the release candidate cycle with the first release candidate being planned for tomorrow’s release. Linux 7.1 was released two weeks ago as a stable release, which got two updates afterwards to implement bug fixes and other general improvements to different kernel components.

When the first release candidate gets released, we will provide you with more complete changelogs, but here are three of the most striking changes done in this version of Linux:

• Performance for AMD EPYC Sorano has seen a massive increase in several areas, including localhost network processing and stress tests. This test was performed on an AMD EPYC 8635P processor with 84 cores and 168 threads, and TCP and QUIC protocol benchmarks show increased performance in Linux 7.2 over the stable release of Linux 7.1.
• Linux 7.2 has seen some deprecations and removals when it comes to very old drivers and code, including the Hercules Monochrome graphics cards that are more than 40 years old, the ancient AppleTalk protocol, and some more remnants of i486 platform code as they age.
• Linux 7.2 also gets prepared for many networking hardware, including Neighbor Awareness Networking (Wi-Fi Aware) for securely discovering and pairing with other devices without relying on traditional routers, Bluetooth, or an internet connection. It also brings support for Wi-Fi 8 (802.11bn), which is an Ultra High Reliability (UHR) standard that focuses on reliability rather than speed.

Linux 7.2 RC1 is expected to be released early Monday.

Linux 7.2 will improve performance for AMD EPYC Sorano

A successor of Linux 7.1 will bring many exciting set of changes related to different parts of the kernel, but it looks like that there are some of the most exciting changes done to the kernel, and you’ll be able to experience them with the first release candidate of Linux 7.2 expected to release on June 29th.

According to the tests made by Phoronix, Linux 7.2 has brought performance improvements to systems running the AMD EPYC Sorano processors, and the test was performed on an AMD EPYC 8635P processor with 84 cores and 168 threads. This processor operates on a Zen 5 architecture.

The initial test that was made focused on improvements of performance regarding the localhost network processing speed, as well as the measurement of latency and a massive boost of performance with Stress-NG.

This test was focused on localhost TCP and QUIC protocol performance with 1, 4, 16, and 32 threads for TCP processing and 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 threads for QUIC processing. For every test, Linux 7.2’s current Git branch wins over the current stable release, which was Linux 7.1. For example, in TCP with 4 threads, 360.59 Gbps was achieved in Linux 7.2 over 308.60 Gbps. Another one was QUIC with 16 threads, 8.67 Gbps was achieved over 8.36 Gbps.

When it comes to network socket benchmarking, latency has also been lowered, with 7.475 µsec (microseconds) being achieved for socket processing latency under Linux 7.2, over 7.729 µsec. As for stress testing, Linux 7.2 achieves 68,499,720.48 BogoOps/s (bogus operations per second), which is a significant improvement over Linux 7.1, which achieved only 12,557,904.56 BogoOps/s.

For more information, consult this Phoronix article.

Linux 7.2 will improve performance for AMD EPYC Sorano

A successor of Linux 7.1 will bring many exciting set of changes related to different parts of the kernel, but it looks like that there are some of the most exciting changes done to the kernel, and you’ll be able to experience them with the first release candidate of Linux 7.2 expected to release on June 29th.

According to the tests made by Phoronix, Linux 7.2 has brought performance improvements to systems running the AMD EPYC Sorano processors, and the test was performed on an AMD EPYC 8635P processor with 84 cores and 168 threads. This processor operates on a Zen 5 architecture.

The initial test that was made focused on improvements of performance regarding the localhost network processing speed, as well as the measurement of latency and a massive boost of performance with Stress-NG.

This test was focused on localhost TCP and QUIC protocol performance with 1, 4, 16, and 32 threads for TCP processing and 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 threads for QUIC processing. For every test, Linux 7.2’s current Git branch wins over the current stable release, which was Linux 7.1. For example, in TCP with 4 threads, 360.59 Gbps was achieved in Linux 7.2 over 308.60 Gbps. Another one was QUIC with 16 threads, 8.67 Gbps was achieved over 8.36 Gbps.

When it comes to network socket benchmarking, latency has also been lowered, with 7.475 µsec (microseconds) being achieved for socket processing latency under Linux 7.2, over 7.729 µsec. As for stress testing, Linux 7.2 achieves 68,499,720.48 BogoOps/s (bogus operations per second), which is a significant improvement over Linux 7.1, which achieved only 12,557,904.56 BogoOps/s.

For more information, consult this Phoronix article.

https://winbuzzer.com/2026/06/23/linux-72-removes-kernel-side-strncpy-after-six-year-cleanup-xcxwbn/

Linux 7.2 has removed the kernel-side strncpy API after a six-year cleanup, shifting low-level code toward explicit string-copy helpers and reviewable intent.

#LinuxKernel #Kernel #Linux72 #Linux #Cybersecurity

https://winbuzzer.com/2026/06/23/linux-72-removes-kernel-side-strncpy-after-six-year-cleanup-xcxwbn/

Linux 7.2 has removed the kernel-side strncpy API after a six-year cleanup, shifting low-level code toward explicit string-copy helpers and reviewable intent.

#LinuxKernel #Kernel #Linux72 #Linux #Cybersecurity