14 DAY TRIAL // As expected, Linus Torvalds announced on Sunday evening the release and general availability of the fourth RC (Release Candidate) milestone of the upcoming Linux 4.12 kernel series.
According to Linus Torvalds, the development cycle of Linux kernel 4.12 remains fairly calm, containing pretty much the same "standard distribution of patches" like all other previous RCs. That could be because most of the kernel developers have already started their summer vacations.
"Things remain fairly calm for 4.12, although not quite as calm as it appeared earlier in the week. I think two-thirds of the commits came in on Friday or the weekend," says Linus Torvalds in the mailing list announcement. "But timing aside, it all looks fairly normal. It's all pretty small, nothing really stands out as unusual."
The Linux kernel 4.12 Release Candidate 4 consists of two-thirds updated drivers for GPU, MD, HID, SCSI, RDMA, SCSI target, and input devices, with the rest of the patch being a mix of enhancements to the x86 hardware architecture and OverlayFS file system, as well as the usual core kernel and mm changes.
Linux kernel 4.12 could hit the streets in very early July
If things remain calm in the next few weeks, until the end of the month when the seventh Release Candidate will be announced by Linus Torvalds, we believe that the final release of the Linux 4.12 kernel could hit the streets in very early July, specifically on Sunday, July 2, 2017.
Until then, you can download the Linux kernel 4.12 Release Candidate 4 source tarball right now from kernel.org or via our website and take it for a test drive. Please try to keep in mind that this is a pre-release version and you should not replace your stable kernel with it, nor deploy it in production environments.