The ongoing development of the Linux kernel brings us to Linux 6.8, the upcoming major kernel release, Linus Torvalds has just announced today that the first Release Candidate (RC) milestone is now available for public testing.
Linux kernel 6.8 started its two-week merge window immediately after the launch of Linux 6.7. This window is now closed, signalling that the first Release Candidate (RC) development version of the kernel is ready for early adopters, distro maintainers, and software enthusiasts.
As stated by Linus Torvalds, the Linux kernel 6.8 seems to be a relatively minor release, featuring primarily updated drivers for graphics and networking, along with filesystem updates, particularly for bcachefs, XFS, Btrfs, and VFS, in addition to architectural updates.
“The merge window for this release was not the smoothest, with most of the issues being unrelated to the code itself, instead being linked to harsh weather conditions. There were some technical glitches, however. Following the substantially large 6.7 release, 6.8 appears to actually be smaller than average, albeit not by much,” Linus Torvalds commented.
The final release of Linux kernel 6.8 is expected to hit the streets in late April 2023, either on March 10th or March 17th, which depends on how many Release Candidate (RC) milestones will be released until then.
We should expect Linux 6.8 to arrive on March 10th if Linus Torvalds announces seven Release Candidate versions or on March 17th if eight Release Candidates are announced by then.
Until then, you can take the first Linux kernel 6.8 Release Candidate for a test drive on your personal computer by downloading it from Linus Torvalds’ Git tree or from the kernel.org website. Please remember that this is a pre-release version, so don’t install or use it on a production machine!
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