Linux 6.9-rc2 Released As An Easter Test Kernel

Linus Torvalds just released Linux 6.9-rc2 as the newest test release of Linux 6.9 that will be out as stable in mid-May.

This Easter Linux kernel release brings the usual assortment of bug/regression fixes following last week's 6.9-rc1 kernel that closed off this cycle's merge window. Of note this week is fixing the AMD Zen 3 / Zen 4 SRSO mitigation among other bug fixes.

Torvalds wrote in the 6.9-rc2 announcement:

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays kernel rc releases.

Nor does Easter.

So here we are. Another week has passed, and rc2 is out. Nothing here look all that remarkable, and the fixes are fairly evenly spread out (so mostly drivers, because that's the bulk of the code).

Outside of the driver fixes (see shortlog below for details), we've got some more selftest work (mostly networking and bpf but also some random fixes), some architecture fixes (mostly x86), some filesystem work (xfs and btrfs) and random noise in other parts (mm, core kernel, networking, Kbuild..).

Nothing stands out to me or looks unusual."

See the Linux 6.9 feature overview for a look at all the exciting changes and hardware support that is new for the Linux 6.9 kernel. In my early Linux 6.9 kernel benchmarking, so far the AMD EPYC performance is looking really nice with this new kernel code.