Linux 6.16-rc1 was just released by Linus Torvalds. This first release candidate of [1]Linux 6.16 marks the close of the two-week merge window where many new features and other changes were introduced.

I'll have out my comprehensive Linux 6.16 changes / feature overview article out in the next day or two for summarizing the numerous Phoronix articles covering the individual Linux v6.16 changes thus far. Some of the highlights for Linux 6.16 include various new performance improvements, several new AMD and Intel hardware drivers added, NVIDIA Blackwell and Hopper GPU support tacked onto the Nouveau driver, Intel APX support being prepped, USB audio offloading finally made it into the mainline kernel, sysfs reporting of hard/soft lock-up counts is quite convenient, the AMDKFD kernel compute driver can now be built on RISC-V systems, and the OpenVPN DCO driver was upstreamed for faster VPN performance. Another exciting kernel cycle from new hardware support to more performance optimizations and other great changes.

Now it's on to testing Linux 6.16 Git and the stable Linux 6.16 kernel release should happen around the end of July.

Update: Linus Torvalds is now out with the [2]6.16-rc1 announcement :

I think we had a fairly normal merge window, although I did get the feeling that there were a few more "late straggler" pull requests than usual. Not to a huge degree, but there was definitely an upward bump at the end of the second week.

But on the whole, all the stats look pretty normal: about half the diff is driver updates (all over, although as usual gpu and networking account for a fairly large chunk of it).



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Linux+6.16

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wiiqYoM_Qdr3L15BqJUyRi6JjR02HSovwwz+BXy7DdVeA@mail.gmail.com/T/#u