Linux 5.13 hits rc5, isn’t yet calm, Linus Torvalds is only mildly perturbed

Emperor Penguin hopes ‘fairly average’ release will ‘start shrinking now’

The fifth release candidate for version 5.13 of the Linux kernel has emerged, and project boss Linus Torvalds has expressed only mild concern about progress.

“Hmm,” opened Torvalds' weekly State of the Kernel post. “Things haven't really started to calm down very much yet, but rc5 seems to be fairly average in size. I'm hoping things will start shrinking now.”

Torvalds hasn’t found anything to worry him so far in the 5.13 release cycle.

The first release candidate saw him opine that the community could expect “a fairly big merge window, but things seem to have proceeded fairly smoothly." He added that assessment could represent “Famous last words.”

By rc2, his position was that “Things look pretty normal” and come rc3 he expressed a little surprise at the small size of the weekly release.

Of release candidate four, Torvalds wrote: “It's not the biggest rc4 we've ever had, but it's certainly up there, believably competing for the title.” But he remained unworried due to the stability of rc2 and rc3.

This week’s announcement of rc5 expressed Torvalds’ hope that weekly releases will shrink, indicating that he expects to stick to his preferred routine of requiring no more than eight release candidates.

That looks on the cards, as he wrote that “Nothing really looks all that hugely exciting” in rc5.

Whenever the new release lands, its big features include support for Apple’s M1 silicon, 64-bit ARM Hyper-V guest support, support for Microsoft Surface devices, and more refined and less resource-hungry speculative execution remediation. ®