Linux 5.2-rc6 Released With Steam Networking Fix - The Biggest Post-RC1 Release

Linus Torvalds released the Linux 5.2-rc6 development kernel a day ahead of schedule to better fit around his summer travels.

It was yet another week of bug fixing for Linux 5.2 but overall things are looking up, however, this 5.2-rc6 release was the biggest release candidate yet following the (5.2-rc1) merge window. Linus Torvalds wrote, "rc6 is the biggest rc in number of commits we've had so far for this 5.2 cycle (obviously ignoring the merge window itself and rc1). And it's not just because of trivial patches (although admittedly we have those too), but we obviously had the TCP SACK/fragmentation/mss fixes in there, and they in turn required some fixes too."

However, he did express optimism still over Linux 5.2 in today's rc6 announcement, "With all that out of the way, I'm still reasonably optimistic that we're on track for a calm final part of the release, and I don't think there is anything particularly bad on the horizon."

One important fix merged last night was fixing the kernel issue that was causing Steam network connection issues. That fix has also already been back-ported to maintained stable kernel trees.

See our Linux 5.2 feature overview to learn more about all of the changes at hand with this current kernel series.