Linux 4.17-rc1 Kernel Released: A Ton Of New Functionality While Shedding Old Code

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 15 April 2018 at 09:49 PM EDT. 30 Comments
LINUX KERNEL
Just like clockwork the Linux 4.17-rc1 kernel was released tonight following the two week long merge window.

See the Linux 4.17 features article published this morning to learn all about what's new in this kernel release. There is a ton of work from prominent AMD and Intel graphics driver updates to new hardware support and much more. As covered just a short time ago, Linux 4.17 power measurements are looking surprisingly good for lowering the power use while idling and also the power efficiency under load.

More Linux 4.17 kernel benchmarks are on the way.

The Linux 4.17 stable kernel should debut in about eight weeks -- or roughly the middle of June -- depending upon how the rest of the 4.17 development cycle pans out with stabilizing all of this new functionality.

What's great about the Linux 4.17 kernel is that even with all the new/improved features, it's actually smaller than Linux 4.16! As of this evening in Linux Git since v4.16, it comes down to 13538 files changed, 627723 insertions(+), 818855 deletions(-). The savings of around 200 thousand lines of code lighter in the end thanks to chopping around a half million lines of kernel code in the form of obsolete CPU architectures, cleaning up the kernel's staging area, and other work as covered in the aforelinked feature overview. The kernel codename remains stuck with the Fearless Coyote.

As far as what Linus Torvalds has to say about Linux 4.17-rc1, we've been waiting for his announcement to hit the list but meanwhile you can just head straight over to Kernel.org to grab this new testing release.

Update: Linus Torvalds' release announcement is now available, "The most special thing that happened is purely numerology: we've passed the six million git objects mark, and that is reason enough to call the next kernel 5.0. Except I probably won't, because I don't want to be too predictable. The version numbers are meaningless, which should mean that they don't even follow silly numerological rules - even if v3.0 and v4.0 happened to be at the 2M and 4M mark respectively. But v5.0 will happen some day. And it should be meaningless. You have been warned."
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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