So far, the version of the kernel that is currently in development has seen three Release Candidates released where all went well, although the common word is "normal". A few hours ago, Linus Torvalds He launched Linux 6.5-rc4, and the trend has continued. The least normal thing is perhaps something that Linus comments to talk about how normal everything is going, a coincidence that was fulfilled in both 6.2 and 6.3.
There are now 328 commits that have not been merged, and those were the same as there were in the rc4 of Linux 6.2 and 6.3. This number doesn't say much, but it does give us an idea of ​​the work that has been done and what remains to be done, and that it is the same or similar to that of two of the three most recent versions means that nothing is out of the ordinary. Now, as the father of Linux says on many occasions, let's knock on wood, everything can change at any time.
Linux 6.5 will arrive in August
In fact, it's *so* normal that we've hit a very particular (and peculiar) pattern with rc4 releases: we've had *exactly* 328 unmerged commits in rc4 in 6.2, 6.3 and now 6.5. strange coincidence.
And honestly, that weird numerology coincidence is just about the most interesting thing here. Because rc5 looks like business as usual: driver updates (maybe a bit more sparse than usual, but that's due to pulling all the greg trees), architecture updates, and random fixes elsewhere (filesystems, rtmutex , kvm self-tests, documentation, etc.).
documentation, etc).
Linux 6.5-rc4 has arrived seven days after 6.5-rc3, and the stable version is expected for end of august. Canonical confirmed that this will be the version of the core that will be used by the Mantic Minotaur that will arrive in the third half of October. Considering that the feature freeze is about a month before the release of the stable version, the timelines fit even if the eighth Release Candidate reserved for problematic developments had to be released. In that case, Linux 6.5 would arrive on September 3.
Ubuntu users who want to use Linux 6.5 eventually will just have to upgrade to Ubuntu 23.10. Those of Jammy Jellyfish who have not performed manual changes to avoid updating they will receive it later, when Canonical does the back port and port to the latest LTS version the kernel of the latest "interim" version.