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Linus Torvalds reluctantly issues one more release candidate for Linux kernel 5.12

We gotta do this again? Really? Oh, alright then. But this eight release candidates thing is not great

Linux kernel development boss Linus Torvalds has reluctantly issued an eighth release candidate for version 5.12 of the FOSS OS.

“Ok, so it's been _fairly_ calm this past week, but it hasn't been the kind of dead calm I would have taken to mean "no rc8 necessary,” Torvalds wrote in his customary Sunday afternoon (US time) update on the state of kernel development.

“So here we are, with an extra rc to make sure things are all settled down. It's not _that_ rare: this is the fifth time in the 5.x series we've ended up with an rc8, but I have to admit that I prefer it when a release doesn't end up needing that extra week,” he added.

The new version of the kernel will add the ability to run Linux as root partition under Hyper-V, support for the Snapdragon 888, mainlining support for RISC-V boards from SiFive, plus more of Intel’s IOT-centric ACRN hypervisor.

Torvalds reckons its worth waiting for those features to nail down other recent changes that he said pertain to networking, drivers, and bpf verifier fixes. “Other than that it's mostly other driver updates (gpu, dmaengine, HID, input, nvdimm) and arch updates (mainly arm and arm64).”

“And a number of one-liner build fixes for unusual configurations.”

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But Torvalds does not want testing of those few foibles to drag on, exhorting testers to “keep it to just one extra week, ok? We have occasionally done rc9's too, but I really don't expect that this time around.”

“Let's plan on a final 5.12 release next weekend - but please do give it one last test to check that it is all solid. Ok?” ®

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