Today, Linus Torvalds announced the general availability of the first Release Candidate (RC) for the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel series, marking a significant milestone for the development community. This announcement comes just two weeks after the release of Linux kernel 6.15, indicating that the merge window for 6.16 has now closed.
Developers and users are invited to test this Release Candidate, which will see updates and new versions released every Sunday until the official launch, expected in late July or early August 2025. The final release date hinges on the number of subsequent Release Candidates that will be issued; there could be either seven or eight, tentatively setting the release for July 27 or August 3 based on the count.
Some of the notable features expected in the 6.16 kernel include:
- A new systemd service for running cpupower.
- Enhancements to the bcachefs filesystem.
- Support for Intel’s Auto Counter Reload and APX technologies.
- Introduced HD-audio controls via ACPI for NVIDIA devices.
- Support for NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell GPUs in nouveau drivers.
Additionally, Linux 6.16 will implement hardware-wrapped keys for fscrypt and Intel QAT hardware accelerators in EROFS for improved decompression. There are also enhancements for AMD ACP 7.x, Intel AVS platforms, and Tegra264 support in the ADMA driver.
The EXT4 filesystem will benefit from large folio support and atomic write capabilities for bigalloc file systems. There will be various driver updates and enhancements across documentation, filesystem interfaces, and networking.
As a word of caution, the Release Candidate is a pre-release version and is not recommended for production setups. Interested users can download it from Linus Torvalds’ git tree or the kernel.org website for testing.
The excitement around the upcoming features positions Linux 6.16 to continue expanding its robust capabilities in the open-source operating system landscape.