Linux 4.16-rc2 Kernel Released

Linus Torvalds has announced the second weekly release candidate of the in-development Linux 4.16 kernel.

It's been another week of bug fixes and other minor updates following the end last weekend of the Linux 4.16 kernel merge window. Among the notable items this week are more Meltdown and Spectre mitigation work but aside from that was more of the usual bug/regression fixing work. As of writing this article, Linus Torvalds hasn't published any formal mailing list message but the code is available via Kernel.org and Git.

To learn about the new features overall of this forthcoming kernel update, read our Linux 4.16 feature overview.

More Linux 4.16 kernel benchmarks will be forthcoming on Phoronix. The Linux 4.16 kernel should be officially released as stable around the beginning of April.

Update: Torvalds' brief release message is now available, "I take the fairly quiet rc be a good sign for 4.16, but honestly, rc2 is often fairly calm. That's probably because people are taking a breather after the merge window, but also simply because it might take a while to find any issues. But let's be optimistic, and just assume - at least for now - that it's because all is well."