Linux 5.0-rc8 Released - Baking The Final Kernel For One More Week

Linus Torvalds opted for issuing an eighth weekly release candidate tonight for the Linux 5.0 kernel rather than going straight to the official/stable release.

Linux 5.0-rc8 is now available to allow for another week of testing for this code. This RC8 release also was warranted due to a number of fixes landing over the past week, which ended up being rather a lot for this stage of development. Torvalds was a bit undecided whether to do RC8 or not, but ended up deciding to be cautious especially with 5.0-rc8 coming in larger than 5.0-rc7.

Torvalds noted, "This may be totally unnecessary, but we actually had more patches come in this last week than we had for rc7, which just didn't make me feel the warm and fuzzies. And while none of the patches looked all that scary, some of them were to pretty core files, so it wasn't all just random rare drivers (although those kinds also existed)...But on the whole I just felt happier with an extra rc than worrying about things."

If you are not familiar with the changes coming to this next kernel release, see our Linux 5.0 feature overview or if you are in a rush to see just the most interesting Linux 5.0 highlights.

So Linux 5.0 should be out next Sunday, 3 March, which will then mark the opening of the Linux 5.1 kernel merge window for the following two weeks. Given the rough timing, that would place Linux 5.1 going stable around 5 May, if all goes well.