The newest weekly test release of [1]Linux 6.17 is now available as we work toward the stable kernel release around the end of September.

Linux 6.17-rc6 was just released by Linus Torvalds. Pulled into Linux 6.17-rc6 is a fix to [2]address some "serious breakage" around system hibernation support as a regression introduced in Linux 6.16. Fixes to both the Intel and AMD P-State drivers also landed this week as part of the Linux 6.16-rc7 material.

Some new material for Linux 6.17-rc6 since it just amounts to new device/vendor IDs is [3]FLYDIGI APEX 5 gaming controller support for those expensive game controller options.

This week also saw the public announcement of [4]VMSCAPE as a new CPU security vulnerability issue affecting both AMD and Intel processors . VMSCAPE mitigation support was merged to Linux Git upon embargo lift and also since back-ported to the stable Linux kernel series. Linux 6.17-rc6 has the mitigation if you aren't a daily Git rider.

Linus Torvalds wrote with the [5]6.17-rc6 announcement :

"Things remain pretty calm, and for some reason this release seems to just not have a ton of problems. Hopefully I'm not jinxing it.

It might just have been people being on vacation in August (read: Europe) which has caused this release to be nice and calm, but whatever the reason I'm certainly not complaining.

Somewhat unusually, almost a third of the patch is from filesystem fixes, but that seems to be pure coincidence: not because there are any particularly large fixes, but because we just happened to independently have fixes in several different filesystems (ceph, smb client, nfs, erofs, btrfs). So just random timing.

Another third is driver fixes (gpu being half of it, the rest being other random drivers), and the final third is just "misc other stuff": core networking, another CPU speculation mitigation, somedocumentation fixes, some selftest updates, and minor noise elsewhere.

But really, none of it is very large. So everything seems slated for a normal release in two weeks."

There are [6]a lot of great features and improvements in Linux 6.17 with this stable kernel version hopefully coming out two weeks from today on 28 September.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Linux+6.17

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.17-PM-Hibernation-FIxes

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/FLYDIGI-APEX-5-Linux-6.17

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-VMSCAPE

[5] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wganrF=w6xndv5kFeM9v2QwtZW4yzgHY=0=SwnjxxFVaA@mail.gmail.com/T/#u

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-617-features