Linux 5.8-rc2 Released For This Big Summer 2020 Kernel

Linus Torvalds as the father of the Linux kernel marked Father's Day 2020 with the release of Linux 5.8-rc2, right on schedule following last week's big 5.8-rc1 kernel with this cycle being one of the largest ever for this open-source kernel.

While Linux 5.8-rc1 was so huge, Linux 5.8-rc2 is pacing fairly well and isn't abnormally large as the second weekly release candidate. While past the merge window, one new set of features found in RC2 is the per-inode EXT4 DAX support for better direct access handling on persistent memory storage. That pull slightly missed the 5.8-rc1 deadline last week and was pulled in afterwards.

Linus wrote of 5.8-rc2, "So rc2 isn't particularly big or scary, and falls right in the normal range. We'll see how much of that is the usual "catch our breath after the merge window", and how much of that is just "5.8 looks fairly normal despite being large". Shortlog appended, there's nothing that looks alarming to me. It's a mix of arch fixes, GPU driver fixes, filesystems, selftests and misc small noise all over."

See our Linux 5.8 feature overview for all the highlights of this kernel that should debut as stable in August.