Linux 5.3-rc6 Released - Marking Linux's 28th Birthday

Linus Torvalds today released the sixth weekly test release of the upcoming Linux 5.3 kernel. It also happens to be 28 years to the day since Linus Torvalds announced the original Linux kernel.

Playing off Torvalds' original release announcement from 28 years ago, he wrote for today's 5.3-rc6 announcement:

Hello everybody out there using Linux -

I'm doing a (free) operating system (more than just a hobby) for 486 AT clones and a lot of other hardware. This has been brewing for the last 28 years, and is still not done. Iâd like any feedback on any bugs introduced this release (or older bugs too, for that matter).

Linus

PS. Yes, it's 28 years today since that original announcement paraphrased above. The shortlog below is obviously just for the last week, though.

Nothing particularly surprising from the last week - most of the patch is drivers, with networking and rdma being most noticeable, but there's various other things in there too. I wish it was smaller than it is, but it's not _huge_.

Bit if things don't calm down during the upcoming week, though, I may have to do an rc8.

Basically Linux 5.3 is settling down and should see its inaugural stable release in two or three weeks depending upon how the rest of the cycle plays out. See our Linux 5.3 feature overview to learn more about this forthcoming kernel revision.

Happy Birthday Linux!