Linux Kernel 6.18 Release Candidate 2 released
Linus Torvalds has announced the release of Linux Kernel 6.18 RC2, which represents an important turning point in the development process. Although there have been some regressions reported by Guenter's automated test system, many of these were found to be trivial configuration issues or bugs in the QEMU test environment, rather than actual kernel bugs.
As a result, this release is relatively large and still contains some outstanding regressions, but it is showing progress. With it still being relatively early days, Linus remains fairly relaxed about the situation, encouraging continued testing to ensure that the final version meets expectations.
The changelog for Linux Kernel 6.18 RC2 includes a wide range of changes and improvements across various components. Some notable contributions include:
A series of patches from Alexei Starovoitov, addressing issues related to BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) map allocation and memory management.
A set of updates from Eric Biggers, improving the SMB (Server Message Block) client implementation, including fixes for signature calculation, pre-authentication hash generation, and other areas.
Contributions from Marc Kleine-Budde, focusing on CAN (Controller Area Network) driver improvements, particularly in the m_can module.
Marc Zyngier's extensive series of patches addresses various aspects of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) for arm64, including timer context handling, vCPU event management, and other optimizations.
Other notable contributors include Alex Deucher, Andrey Albershteyn, Alok Tiwari, Ankan Biswas, and many others, each contributing to the improvement of specific kernel components or addressing various bugs and issues.
The full changelog lists over 250 commits from more than 70 different developers, demonstrating the collaborative effort that goes into creating a robust and feature-rich operating system like Linux.
Linux kernel 6.18-rc2 released
Linux kernel version 6.18-rc2 is now available:
Full source: https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/t/linux-6.18-rc2.tar.gz
Patch: https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/p/v6.18-rc2/v6.17
You can view the summary of the changes at the following URL:
https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/ds/v6.18-rc2/v6.18-rc1
