Linux 5.18-rc6 Released - Linux 5.18 Is Looking "Quite Well-Behaved"

Linus Torvalds just released Linux 5.18-rc6 as the latest weekly release candidate ahead of the Linux 5.18 stable release expected later in May.

Torvalds summed up the new Linux 5.18-rc6 test candidate as:

So 5.18 is looking like it's going to be one of the larger releases in numbers of commits (we'll see where it ends up - it's going to be neck-and-neck with 5.14 right now, but won't be as big as 5.13 was). But despite the merge window being big, the release candidates have generally been quite modest in size, and rc6 continues that trend. I keep expecting the other shoe to drop, but 5.18 just seems to be quite well-behaved.

Let's see if this jinxes it, but nothing looks particularly scary here. rc6 looks to be mostly some driver updates (network drivers and rdma stand out, small random fixes elsewhere), with the usual smattering of architecture updates (x86 kvm fixes, but also a long-standing x86 kernel FP use issue, and a smattering of parisc and powerpc fixes). And some wireguard selftest updates.

See the rest of Torvalds' always joyful commentary on the kernel mailing list.

Linux 5.18 stable will be out in 2~3 weeks depending upon how the rest of the cycle plays out. See our Linux 5.18 feature overview to learn more about what's coming in this spring 2022 kernel update.