Linux 4.7-rc1 is now ready for public testing

May 29, 2016 21:00 GMT  ·  By

It's Sunday, and it has been two weeks since the release of the Linux 4.6 kernel, so the time has come for Linus Torvalds to introduce us to the development cycle of the next major kernel branch.

Yes, we're talking about Linux kernel 4.7, which has just received its first Release Candidate (RC) build. It allows the community to download it, compile it for their GNU/Linux systems, and take it for a long weekend test drive, especially now that the merge window has finally been closed by Mr. Torvalds, probably a little bit earlier than expected.

"The morning release is partly because I don't have anything I know of pending (and if there was somebody who was planning on sending their last-minute changes five minutes before the usual afternoon release, I really can't be bothered to care). And partly because I think it's been a fine merge window, and we have plenty of new code to close it with," says Linus Torvalds in today's announcement.

Here's what's new in Linux kernel 4.7 Release Candidate 1

One of the most prominent features of this first Linux 4.7 kernel Release Candidate version is a pretty influential change to the VFS (Virtual File System) layer. It possibly affects various of the supported file systems by the Linux kernel, which can now do a path component and readdir() lookup in parallel within the same directory.

This appears to be one of the biggest modifications to the virtual file system layer that has been implemented in Linux since the kernel developers began working on cached pathname lookups that use the read-copy update (RCU) synchronization mechanism. So if you are involved in path component lookup (security layer), or you usually use low-level filesystems, please do test Linux kernel 4.7 RC1 now.

There are also usual driver updates, mostly or GPU and networking, several architecture updates, documentation improvements, networking stack enhancements, and a little bit of everything else. Download Linux kernel 4.7 Release Candidate 1 right now via our website or directly from kernel.org. Happy testing!