Linux 5.18 Anticipated For Next Weekend, Linux 5.18-rc7 Released

Linus Torvalds has released what is likely the last release candidate before officially declaring Linux 5.18 next weekend if all goes according to plan.

On Sunday night Torvalds released Linux 5.18-rc7 and characterized it as "fairly calm, and as such this is likely the
last rc before 5.18 unless something bad happens next week. All the stats here look normal, with the bulk of it being random driver updates (network drivers, gpu, usb, etc). There's a few filesystem fixes, some core networking, and some code kernel stuff. And some selftest updates."

This cycle has played out fairly well for being a stable and at least so far no major surprises late in the kernel cycle. One notable fix to have been merged this past week is fixing s2idle on more AMD Lenovo laptops.

See Torvalds' 5.18-rc7 announcement for more commentary on this week's update.

See the Linux 5.18 feature overview for the lengthy list of changes coming in this spring 2022 kernel update.