Linux 5.1-rc7 Is "Tiny" Ahead Of The Official Kernel Debut Next Week

Linus Torvalds has recovered from last week's memma eating and this evening released Linux 5.1-rc7 as the newest test release of the upcoming Linux 5.1 kernel.

Notable from our perspective on Linux 5.1-rc7 are the VirtIO and Intel DRM driver regression fixes that landed this week while most of the other material this week were just general fixes and not too prominent unless you were particularly affected by one of the issues.

Linus wrote of Linux 5.1-rc7, "If rc6 was bigger than I wished, it really does seem to have been just
due to timing of pull requests. Because rc7 is tiny...But it's all pretty tiny. Plus about 30% of the patches are marked for stable, so on the whole it really does feel like 5.1 is on target for a regular release next weekend."

See our original Linux 5.1 feature overview if you aren't familiar with the new features of this forthcoming kernel.

So unless any big regressions happen in the week ahead, Linux 5.1 should be released next Sunday, 5 May, followed by the opening of the Linux 5.2 merge window.