Linux 4.10 RC2 is now available for public testing

Jan 2, 2017 23:40 GMT  ·  By

The first day of 2017 starts off for Linux users with the release of the second RC (Release Candidate) development version of the upcoming Linux 4.10 kernel, as announced by Linus Torvalds himself.

As expected, Linux kernel 4.10 entered development two weeks after the release of Linux kernel 4.9, on Christmas Day (December 25, 2016), but don't expect to see any major improvements or any other exciting things in RC2, which comes one week after the release of the first RC, because most of the developers were busy partying.

With a total of 26 changes, according to the appended shortlog (link below), Linux kernel 4.10 Release Candidate 2 is extremely small for an RC build, but Linus Torvalds decided not to skip it and interrupt the development cycle of Linux 4.10 just because of the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

"It's been a really slow week between Christmas Day and New Years Day, and I am not complaining at all. It does mean that RC2 is ridiculously and unrealistically small," said Linus Torvalds in the mailing list announcement. "I almost decided to skip RC2 entirely, but a small little meaningless release every once in a while never hurt anybody."

DAX and networking improvements, small ARM64 fixes

Among the changes introduced by Linux kernel 4.10 RC2, we can mention a bunch of DAX and networking improvements, such as support for Realtek RTL8168 series add-on card, as well as minor IPVLAN, IPv4, TIPC, and Open vSwitch changes, and some small ARM64, x86, crypto, EXT2, EXT4, SMP, and mm fixes.

If you have nothing else better to do these days, you can go ahead and test drive the second Linux kernel 4.10 Release Candidate by downloading the source archive right now from kernel.org or via our website and compiling it yourself for your favorite architecture, but don't forget that this is an early development version.