Key things to note about the release of Linux 6.0

Linus Torvalds has made the first RC milestone available for public testing to mark the beginning of the Linux 6.0 kernel series' development cycle.

On Sunday 14th August 2022, it moved from 5.19 to version 6 because of major updates about performance.

Now that Linux 6.0's merging window has closed, the first RC milestone is available for beta testers and early adopters to try out before the final release is made available in early October 2022. 

If you want to contribute to Torvalds/linux development, check it out on Github.

On the Sunday after Linux 6.0 release candidate version 1 was made public (RC-1).

According to Torvalds, there are "around 13.5k non-merge commits in here" and another 800 or so merges, so it might not be nearly the same improvement that macOS users will get with Ventura scheduled for release later this year.

Linux 6.0

Linus Torvalds claims that all the major changes have been merged and that Linux kernel 6.0 will be an excellent release with many enhancements for AMD GPUs. A significant part of this release consists of new and updated drivers to better support hardware, but there are also upgrades to the architecture, filesystems, and tools.

The Linux producer pointed out the absence of Rust in this release but proposes them in the next 6.x release candidate. 

As noted, the final Linux 6.0 kernel release is expected in early October, on the 2nd or the 9th, depending on how many Release Candidate (RC) milestones are released until then. Only Linus Torvalds knows.

You can download the first Release Candidate (RC1) build of the next Linux 6.0 kernel series from kernel.org if you want to test it out on your hardware before then. It is advisable to avoid installing this version on a machine used for actual work, as it is still in the testing phase.

Torvalds counted the modifications made to Linux 6.0-rc1 out of pure curiosity. He identified a total of 13,099 modified files, 1,280,295 additions, and 341,210 deletions.

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