Kernel Watch
Jon Masters summarises the latest happenings in the Linux kernel, so that you don’t have to.
Linus Torvalds announced Linux 6.15-rc1, noting that it was “one of the bigger” development cycles, “due to the previous releases being impacted by the holiday season”. The new kernel includes various internal reworks (such as updating minimum compiler versions and refactoring networking code), but it also includes a number of user-visible changes, such as the initial driver stub for the new Nova-core successor to the Nouveau Nvidia GPU driver.
If things follow a typical Linux kernel development cycle, we are looking at a final 6.15 kernel release in June. We will keep readers updated next month as the kernel is tested. Of course, this assumes that Linus doesn’t forget to do the release, as he infamously did last month for 6.14. After we went to press noting that 6.14 was imminent, the new kernel was delayed by an extra day when Linus got distracted preparing for upcoming developments and “entirely forgot to actually ever cut the release”. Oops.