Linux 6.6-rc3 Released With MG Timestamps Removed

With roughly just about one month to go until the stable release, Linux 6.6-rc3 was released today as the newest test release of Linux 6.6.

Linux 6.6-rc3 comes after a busy week of bug fixing. In addition to the usual bug/regression fixing, Linux 6.6-rc3 does end up dropping a new feature only introduced back during the v6.6 merge window: multi-grain timestamps were removed after the design turned out to be less than satisfactory. With the problems that arose, the developers decided to gut the code entirely from Linux 6.6 rather than just disabling it as they will need to incorporate a new approach to this more precise and optional time-stamps for file-systems to suit an NFS use-case.

Linux 6.6-rc3 also has a wide assortment of other random bug fixes across the board. Linus Torvalds commented in the 6.6-rc3 announcement:

"Another week, another -rc.

As usual, rc3 is a bit larger than rc2, as people have started finding more issues.

Unusually, we have a large chunk of changes in filesystems. Part of it is the vfs-level revert of some of the timestamp handling that needs to soak a bit more, and part of it is some xfs fixes. With a few other filesystem fixes too.

But drivers and architecture updates are also up there, so it's not like the fs stuff dominates. It's just more noticeable than it usually is.

Anyway, please do go test. None of this looks scary,"

See the Linux 6.6 feature overview for a look at all of the major changes and new features coming in this kernel version due out around the end of October or early November.