Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 6.1-rc3 as the third weekly test build of the Linux 6.1 kernel in development.
After Linux 6.1-rc2 ended up being unusually large, Torvalds described tonight’s 6.1-rc3 release as follows:
I know I said last week that rc2 was exceptionally great. It turns out that rc3 is almost exactly the same size. But at least for an rc3 build, that larger size is a bit more normal: that’s when people start finding issues and sending fixes for them.
So while rc2 was just _way_ bigger than usual, rc3 is only a bit bigger than an average rc3 build. But it’s still big enough. Hopefully things will start to calm down and we will start to see these rc’s get smaller in size. Please?
Unlike rc2, there is no single reason for the bulk of rc3’s changes. They’re pretty much everywhere, with the usual distribution – drivers dominating (networking, gpu, and sound are the most visible, but there’s a bit of everything).
Some of the fixes found this week for Linux 6.1-rc3 include recovering some persistent Intel Raptor Lake device IDs,
Seeing all the fixes this week via the 6.1-rc3 announcement, Torvalds concluded it with, “although it is not small, nothing seems particularly disturbing or strange…”
Check out my Linux 6.1 feature list for an overview of all the notable features that come with Linux 6.1, which will be released in early December. So far, I haven’t encountered any significant performance regressions in my Linux 6.1 benchmark, but further testing is still pending.
