Linux 5.3-rc4 Released With A Week Of Fixes Plus SWAPGS "Grand Schemozzle" Code
Linus Torvalds commented in the announcement that 5.3-rc4 is larger than last week's release candidate "and then some", due to the timing of pull requests. He explained, "It is worth nothing that while this rc is the largest rc4 (at least in number of commits) that we've had in a couple of years, it's not really outrageously so - it really is just larger than usual by about the same amount that rc3 was smaller than usual. So I'm not worried, I'm just pointing out a random and somewhat unusual pattern."
On top of the week's worth of bug/regression fixes, this week also brought the disclosure of the Spectre V1 variant SWAPGS vulnerability that is also known as the Grand Schemozzle by the kernel developers. That SWAPGS mitigation is in place for 5.3-rc4 and also the various supported/LTS kernel versions.
Linux 5.3 should be out in September with its many new/improved features followed by kicking off development of Linux 5.4.
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