Linux 4.20-RC5 Released With STIBP Performance Fix, 4.20 Final Likely Around Christmas

Linus Torvalds has outed the fifth weekly release candidate of the in-development Linux 4.20.

Linux 4.20-RC5 is bigger than the past three release candidates, which worries Linus a bit. But 4.20-RC5 does come with the all important STIBP performance fix so that the Linux 4.20 performance doesn't regress hard like we've been pointing out the past few weeks. So the better STIBP behavior of processes opting into it (via prctl interface) and defaulting it on for SECCOMP processes is the sane approach as to not compromise overall system performance by applying it to all threads.

Another notable fix for Linux 4.20-RC5 is an AMD MCE fix for correcting some AMD Raven Ridge systems that were failing to boot. That important fix landed just in the past few days.

While RC5 is larger than Linus would have liked, he's already trying to figure out when Linux 4.20.0 will be ready to release and for not dealing with the Linux 4.21 merge window over the holiday. At this stage he is hoping to officially release Linux 4.20 as a Christmas release. Torvalds' comments can be read on the kernel mailing list.

See our Linux 4.20 feature overview for more details on the big highlights of this next kernel release.