Linux 4.16-rc7 Kernel Released, Final Likely Next Week

Linus Torvalds has released his seventh weekly release candidate of the upcoming Linux 4.16 kernel release.

If all goes well, next weekend will mark the official Linux 4.16.0 stable kernel debut while 4.16-rc7 is your last chance to test out this major kernel upgrade.

But there's a chance instead next weekend might yield 4.16-rc8. Linus wrote of RC7, "So after a couple of pretty small rc's, rc7 is much too big for my taste. By this time in the release, things should have calmed down more than they apparently have. That said, I do blame most of it on the timing variation, notably how rc6 didn't have any networking updates in it, and the rc5 network pull was right after the rc4 release. As a result, we have 2.5 weeks worth of networking stuff, and that makes rc7 look artificially bigger."

At this stage he is not planning for an RC8, but it will depend upon the activity over the next week for him to decide on the final release logistics for Linux 4.16. About half of the changes for 4.16-rc7 come down to networking updates.

We have already written dozens of articles about the major changes to find with Linux 4.16, but if you are new here, the easiest to get up to speed is by checking out our Linux 4.16 feature overview.