14 DAY TRIAL // Just a few moments ago, April 24, Linus Torvalds made his regular Sunday announcement about the next RC (Release Candidate) build of the upcoming Linux 4.6 kernel.
Things are looking great and safe for the development cycle of Linux kernel 4.6, and while this fifth RC build is considerably bigger than the previous one, it still remains in the normal range, at least as Linus Torvalds sees it, and Linux 4.6 might just be one of those rare releases to not even get a seventh RC.
"If things continue this way, this might be one of those rare releases that don't even get to rc7. At least that's how it feels now, although to be honest I suspect that even if things continue this calm I'd do the normal rc7 just because there's no particular hurry or reason not to," said Linus Torvalds in today's announcement.
Linux kernel 4.6 coming next month
Looking at the appended shortlog, the fifth Release Candidate of Linux kernel 4.6 includes the usual updates to drivers (60% Ethernet drivers), networkin stack improvements, tooling fixes, and various other small changes to architectures and filesystems.
Well, you know the drill already, the Linux kernel 4.6 RC5 sources are now available for download for the kernel.org website or via ours. If you have nothing better to do Sunday evening, don't hesitate to take this new Release Candidate build for a test drive and report any bugs to the kernel developers.
As usual, please try to remember that this is a development build of the upcoming Linux 4.6 kernel, so you shouldn't replace your OS' stable kernel with it. As noted by Mr. Torvalds above, the final Linux kernel 4.6 release should hit the streets sometimes in mid-May 2016 if he decides not to drop the seventh Release Candidate build.