14 DAY TRIAL // Just a few minutes ago, Linus Torvalds announced the general availability of the fourth RC (Release Candidate) version of the upcoming Linux 4.7 kernel.
We were waiting for the Release Candidate 4 build of Linux kernel 4.7 to appear online on Sunday, June 19, but it looks like Linus Torvalds had other plans for the weekend that has just passed, so he dropped a short announcement an hour after midnight, on June 20, 2016.
According to Mr. Torvalds, the fourth Release Candidate of Linux kernel 4.7 includes about two-thirds drivers (USB, GPU, iiO, LEDs, DMA, etc.), multiple architecture updates (mostly ARM and x86), small improvements to various filesystems, updated documentation, as well as a bunch of other patches to core kernel components and the usual bug fixes.
"It's been a fairly normal week, and rc4 is out," said Linus Torvalds in today's announcement. "The bulk of the driver updates are usb and gpu, but there's iio, leds, platform drivers, dma etc). The Arch updates are mostly arm, with some small x86 fixlets too. But it's all pretty small, nothing particularly worrisome."
Linux kernel 4.7 coming mid-July 2016
Those of you who were waiting to test-drive the new Release Candidate (RC) build of Linux kernel 4.7 can download the source archive right now via our website or directly from the kernel.org , compile the code and install it on a computer that will be used only for testing purposes, not production work.
The development cycle of Linux kernel 4.7 will continue with at least three more RC (Release Candidate) builds, until mid-July, when we should be able to get the final release. However, the adoption of Linux kernel 4.7 amongst various GNU/Linux operating systems will take a while, probably a couple of months or more.