The Linux 7.1-rc6 kernel is now available for closing out the month of May and approaching the [1]Linux 7.1 stable release that should be out by mid-June.

Following [2]lots of AI/LLM-assisted fixes in recent weeks , this week was yet another busy week with lots of code churn driven by coding agents. Linux networking still saw [3]significantly bigger pull requests due to the AI/LLM coding agent contributions. Also merged this week were [4]more USB device quirks , [5]hiding documentation on the "clearcpuid" kernel parameter , and [6]support for the ASUS ROG RAIKIRI II and Nova 2 Lite Controllers gaming controllers .

Linus Torvalds wrote in today's [7]7.1-rc6 announcement :

"Well, I wouldn't call this "small", but it is certainly smaller than rc5 was. And I don't think there's anything particularly scary here, so maybe we're still on track for a normal release cycle. Let's see.

Things look pretty normal except for the larger-than-I'd-wish-for size (which I guess technically is "normal" these days too). The bulk of the changes are drivers all over the place - GPU, networking, usb, serial, sound, scsi ... A little bit of everything.

There's also core networking and selftest updates. The rest is pretty much spread out: architecture fixes (x86, mips, arm64 - mainly kvm), filesystem fixes (smb, nfs), and some other random fixes (mm, liveupdate)."

Take a look at the [8]Linux 7.1 features for learning more about all the exciting changes coming with this stable kernel version due out in June.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Linux+7.1

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-rc5-Released

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Net-Significantly-Bigger

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-rc6-USB

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Hide-Docs-clearcpuid

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-rc6-Input

[7] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjWS2O9NPwgPuGbcEfdTUJGBJ1hWE8CNZciTta-yVnRQg@mail.gmail.com/T/#u

[8] https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-71-features-changes