14 DAY TRIAL // Linus Torvalds has just announced a new Linux kernel 5.6 release candidate at a time when the world is in lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Torvalds explains that Linux kernel version 5.6-rc7 is actually “pretty small,” adding that this is also likely the effect of the COVID-19 which is keeping everyone at home focusing on other stuff.
“Nothing really stands out, it's all pretty small. I'm going to be optimistic, and say that it's because we're nicely on track for a normal calm release, but obviously it may be partly because everybody is distracted by virus worries. But I haven't seen anything that looks hugely worrisome on the kernel side,” Torvalds explains.
Indeed, the new coronavirus outbreak keeps everyone at home these days, especially as the infection expands to make more victims across the entire world.
At the time of writing, there are over 225,000 currently-infected patients worldwide, with nearly 215,000 of them said to be in mild condition.
China continues to be the country affected the most by the new coronavirus, with over 81,000 confirmed cases, followed by Italy and the United States with 59,000 and 34,750 infected persons, respectively.
Typical release candidate
Torvalds says that despite the whole madness created by COVID-19, everything looks normal from a kernel perspective.
“The world around us may be going through strange times, but at least so far kernel development looks normal,” he says.
So what should you expect in this new release candidate? Just the usual, he explains, as the new release candidate is by no means something that stands out from the typical development cycle.
“The bulk this week is - as usual - drivers: gpu, mmc, staging, iio, usb, sound... But there's some VM fixes, some Arch updates, documentation and tooling (mostly turbostat),” Torvalds explains.