Linux 6.3-rc5 Released - Looking To Be In Good Shape

Linus Torvalds just released Linux 6.3-rc5 and it's looking to be in good shape for this stage of development.

Linus Torvalds wrote in the 6.3-rc5 announcement:

"This release continues to appear very normal and boring, which is just how I like it. The commit count says that we've started calming down right on schedule, and the diffstat looks normal too.

Of course, there may be something nasty still hiding, so you never know, but at least for now we seem to be all set for a normal release in three weeks. Knock wood.

If the diffstat for rc4 week was a bit unusual in how drivers didn't completely dominate, then rc5 makes up for it, with pretty much 75% of the diff being drivers. And it's all the usual ones that dominate: networking and gpu drivers make up for over half of it, and the rest is a random mix of other stragglers (x86 platform drivers, input, pinctrl, sound..).

Outside of drivers, it's various random stuff. Architecture fixes (arm64 kvm, riscv, powerpc), filesystems (btrfs, cifs), core networking, documentation and tooling."

A few new changes in Linux 6.3-rc5 worth mentioning are more Gigabyte motherboards now having working WMI sensor driver support and fixing touchpad/keyboard issues with some Clevo/TUXEDO laptops.

See my Linux 6.3 feature overview for a look at the prominent changes coming in this kernel version that should debut as stable around the end of April.