Linux 4.16-rc1 Kernel Released With Many Changes

Linux 4.16-rc1 was tagged just minutes ago and remains under the "Fearless Coyote" codename that has been happening for several cycles now. Over the Linux v4.15 stable release, the Linux 4.16 merge window up to RC1 brings 11340 files changed, 491295 insertions(+), 305085 deletions(-). Yes, that's another hearty merge window.
To learn about all of the changes for this next kernel version, see my thorough Linux 4.16 feature overview that I finished up this morning. Linux 4.16 is bringing a lot more work on Spectre/Meltdown mitigation, AMDGPU DC multi-display synchronization, better Intel Cannonlake support, VirtualBox Guest Driver is now mainline, many CPU/scalability improvements, AMD SEV encrypted virtualization support for KVM, file-system improvements, new ARM board support, and a wide range of other improvements as outlined in the aforelinked article.
Linus Torvalds wrote of 4.16-rc1, "I don't want to jinx anything, but things certainly look a lot better than with 4.15. We have no (known) nasty surprises pending, and there were no huge issues during the merge window. Fingers crossed that this stays fairly calm and sane...But there really is changes all over. Drivers may be the bulk (GPU, networking, staging, media, sound, infiniband, scsi and misc smaller subsystems), but we have a fair amount of arch updates (spectre and meltdown fixes for non-x86 architectures, but also some further x86 work, and just general arch updates). And there's networking, filesystem updates, documentation, tooling.."
If all goes well, Linux 4.16.0 should be officially released by mid-April.
18 Comments