Linux 5.3-rc7 Released One Day Late While Linux 5.3 Likely Coming In Two Weeks

It appears Linus Torvalds is spending some time away from his computers this US Labor Day weekend with the Linux 5.3-rc7 kernel test release coming one day late.

Linus released Linux 5.3-rc7 today due to being away from his keyboard most of Sunday. As a result of the extra day and the RC7 week starting off light, last minute pull requests ended up inflating this weekly release candidate to be larger in size than normal.

Torvalds isn't concerned about the size of Linux 5.3 at this late stage of the cycle. But with the Linux Kernel Summit happening next week and Torvalds traveling due to that, he's likely to issue Linux 5.3-rc8 next Sunday as opposed to the stable Linux 5.3 kernel. As a result, Linux 5.3.0 likely won't be out until 15 September and that in turn will mark the opening of the Linux 5.4 merge window when he'll be back home and can more easily manage the merge window.

The list of changes for Linux 5.3-rc7 can be found via the kernel mailing list post. See our Linux 5.3 feature overview to learn about what's coming in this stable release.