Linus Torvalds does announced the release of the Linux 6.6 kernel, stating that the week leading up to the launch had been quiet, which helped to deliver the kernel on time.
Torvalds described a “random number” of smaller solutions across the board, with only one larger solution addressing the r8152 driver.
Linux 6.6 is expected to be the next Long-Term Support (LTS) kernel, and while work on version 6.7 is already underway, it is not expected to be available until early next year.
Linux 6.6 is here, and on time
Eight days before launch, Torvalds said while he announced 6.6-rc7 that this was actually a particularly large rc7.
“It’s definitely on the larger side of our rc7 releases in the 6,.x series,” he said, adding that only 6.1 was larger in terms of the number of commits, and that ultimately required an rc8. Fortunately, 6.6 was eventually released without that extra step.
Version 6.6, introduced in late October 2023, adds the EEVDF scheduler, support for Intel Shadow Stack, and support for upcoming Intel and AMD platforms, including Intel’s Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake processors and AMD’s EPYC and Ryzen CPUs.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Linux would be reducing long-term support from six years to just two years, which sounds like a huge blow. In reality, however, it is thought that few people continue to use six-year-old kernels; maintaining support for a small handful was therefore considered untenable.
“Tomorrow the merge window for 6.7 opens,” Torvalds said, adding his appreciation for “the number of early pull requests I have queued up, with more than 40 ready to go.”