Linux 5.16-rc6 Kernel Released
Linus wrote in the 5.16-rc6 announcement, "Things are calming down, and rc6 is fairly small. That's normal for this time in the release schedule, but it's also normal for this time of year. And I expect that the next two weeks will be very quiet, and smaller still. But maybe people are bored, maybe people are staying in due to covid picking up again, we'll just see."
As a reminder, the Linux 5.16 cycle will be extended due to the holidays and to avoid opening the Linux 5.17 kernel merge window around the New Year festivities. Thus Linux 5.16 will release in early January (should be 9 January) followed by the 5.17 merge window opening.
See our Linux 5.16 feature overview for a look at all the changes in store for this kernel.
Notable with Linux 5.16-rc6 is that x86 core scheduling does remain present and enabled... At the start of the cycle I pointed out how this new scheduling feature hurt Intel Alder Lake performance. In early December Intel posted new patches for x86 cluster scheduling to make it more configurable and disable it for Alder Lake. However, as of Linux 5.16-rc6 that work or any form of it to disable it for ADL explicitly or just disable it by default in the Kconfig has not yet happened. Hopefully will get buttoned up though to avoid the poor Alder Lake experience with this new kernel and not have to wait for v5.17 / stick to v5.15.
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