14 DAY TRIAL // Those wanting to always run the latest Linux kernel on their GNU/Linux distributions will be happy to learn that the Linux 4.12 series is almost here and could launch as soon as next week, on July 2, 2017.
In a mailing list announcement, Linus Torvalds informed the community about the availability of what it appears to be the last RC (Release Candidate) of Linux kernel 4.12, which he considers a fairly small patch that doesn't bring any huge surprises. Therefore, the final release of the Linux 4.12 kernel series could arrive next week.
"It's fairly small, and there were no huge surprises, so if nothing untoward happens this upcoming week, this will be the final RC," says Linus Torvalds. "But as usual, I reserve the right to just drag things out if I end up feeling uncomfortable about things for any reason including just random gut feelings, so we'll see."
What's new in Linux kernel 4.12 RC7
The Linux kernel 4.12 RC7 release is here with a bunch of changes that should improve the compatibility, stability, and security of your devices. As expected, the biggest part of the update are driver improvements, in particular for networking, GPU, SCSI target, input, HID, PINCTRL, block, and sound.
The rest of the patch consists of updates to various hardware architectures, most notably PowerPC (PPC), but there are some small fixes to the ARM64 (AArch64), MIPS, s390 and x86 ones too. Besides that, Linux kernel 4.12 RC7 includes some generic networking fixes, and minor core kernel and scripts changes.
A couple of fixups were also added to the stack hole patch since the previous Release Candidate milestone, and you can download the Linux kernel 4.12 RC7 source tarball right now from kernel.org or via our website if you want to test drive it on your computer, just don't use it in a production environment.