There will at least three more RC versions

Aug 3, 2015 05:10 GMT  ·  By

On August 2, Linus Torvalds announced the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the fifth RC (Release Candidate) version of the forthcoming Linux 4.2 kernel series.

According to Mr. Torvalds, it would appear that the development cycle of Linux kernel 4.2 will consist of at least three more RC (Release Candidate) versions, because things are not calming down and there are a lot of annoying issues popping up lately, such as an old Virtual Filesystem (VFS) bug, a pending Intel i915 MST DP regression, a pending question about various VM changes, and some issues related to NMI and the recent low-level x86 cleanups.

"We're getting up there to the later rc's, but it's looking like 4.2 might be one of the releases needing more than the usual seven rc releases," says Linus Torvalds. "Maybe in two weeks when rc7 rolls around, I will be happier and feel like things are going smoothly and I'm getting comfy with making the final 4.2, but right now I feel like I really want things to calm down and these issues not pop up."

Here's what's new in Linux kernel 4.2 RC5

Looking at the appended shortlog, which offers us a thoughtful overview of the changes implemented in Linux kernel 4.2 RC5, we can notice that most of the work was done to update many essential drivers, especially for things like DRM, networking, SCSI, InfiniBand, but there are also networking and file system improvements, as well as some non-maskable interrupt changes on the x86 architecture.

As usual, those of you brave enough to take a pre-release version of the Linux kernel for a test drive (not on production machines, of course) can download Linux kernel 4.2 RC5 right now from the kernel.org website or via Softpedia, whichever suits you best. Once again, we don't recommend installing a Linux kernel package yourself, especially a development version, if you plan on having a stable computer.