Linux 6.18-rc2 released: “rc2 is bigger”

Linux 6.18-rc2 is now available with an additional week of fixes for Linux 6.18, which is expected to be this year’s Long Term Support (LTS) kernel release.

Since the Linux 6.18 merge window closed last week, Linux 6.18-rc2 brings many different fixes through early testing of this new kernel version. Among the fixes are an assortment of graphics driver fixes, ensuring outdated information is cleared for reporting on why AMD Zen restarts, and cleaning up Rust formatting and documentation based on styling issues raised by Linus Torvalds. Plus many other fixes throughout the kernel.

Linus Torvalds wrote in the 6.18-rc2 announcement:

“No huge surprises here. We had a number of regressions in rc1 reported by Guenter’s automated testing system, so it’s not like this build went smoothly, but at least _some_ of them turned out to be trivial configuration issues, or in the case of SH4 big-endian, they appear to have been ‘just’ bugs in the qemu testing environment, not actually new kernel bugs.

Bottom line: rc2 is bigger and we still have some of the remaining regressions outstanding, but we should progress slowly. It’s still quite early, so I’m not very worried. Things overall seem pretty normal. »

Check out our Linux 6.18 feature preview to learn more about the changes coming to this upcoming kernel release which is expected to see its stable debut in early December.