14 DAY TRIAL // Linus Torvalds has announced the immediate availability of the fifth Release Candidate in the 3.11 branch of the kernel.
Linux kernel 3.11 RC5 is right on schedule, but this time with a smaller number of commits than what we're used to. It's not a bad thing, but it could signal the arrival of a final version sooner rather than later.
This could be a dreary and uninteresting release if not for the date of its release. Linus Torvalds has a way of turning a boring announcement into something worth reading, and he's done it again with the fifth Release Candidate.
“Sadly, the numerology doesn't quite work out, and while releasing the final 3.11 today would be a lovely coincidence (Windows 3.11 was released twenty years ago today), it is not to be. Instead, we have 3.11-rc5,” Linus Torvalds states.
With the exception of this tidbit on information, which is rather informative taking into account the context of the release candidate announcement, Linus Torvalds also explains what the release is all about.
“Which is showing signs of calming down, and is noticeably smaller than previous rc's (both in number of commits and in size of patch). Let's hope that trend isn't just a fluke.”
“There really doesn't seem to be anything major here. The radeon changes are likely the most noticeable, but many of them are for the dynamic power management that is still off by default.. Other than that, misc media fixes, Arch updates, some small filesystem updates etc. Nothing really stands out,” Torvalds ends the official announcement for RC5.
A complete list of changes, improvements, and fixes can be found in the official changelog. Download Linux kernel 3.11 Release Candidate 5 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a beta version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.