» ONGOING DEVELOPMENT
Linus Torvalds announced that the 5.18 kernel, still under development at the time of writing with Release Candidate (RC) 6 being out for testing, “seems to be quite well-behaved” and was on track for release. He noted that 5.18 was on track to be “one of the larger releases in numbers of commits”, coming close to the size of 5.14. While he was still “expecting the other shoe to drop”, it seemed likely the final release was not far away. We’ll have a full summary of the new shiny 5.18 kernel features in the next issue.
Preparations for the upcoming Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) continues. This year’s conference returns once again to having an in-person (hybrid) component and will take place in Dublin on 12-14 September. Among the sessions being prepared is a miniconference dedicated to RISC-V, which Atish Patra announced.
Nvidia opens up its graphics drivers... a little. Rare is the historical occasion in which “open source” and “Nvidia” have been used positively in a sentence together. For many years, Nvidia has faced the ire of kernel developers (famously including Linus Torvalds and a certain finger) because of its lack of interest in working with the open source community. It was, then, shocking to see an announcement come out of the blue that Nvidia is opening up its drivers.