Linus Torvalds has just issued the Linux 6.12-rc6 kernel release as we close in on the stable [1]Linux 6.12 kernel release later in November.

Among the items worth mentioning with this week's Linux 6.12-rc6 release include the additions of [2]a ~2.6% performance optimization from Linus Torvalds himself , [3]more Bcachefs fixes , and a variety of other bug/regression fixes.

Linux 6.12 stable will be out in 2~3 weeks depending upon how this cycle ultimately plays out.

See the [4]Linux 6.12 feature overview for a look at all of the kernel changes coming in this release. Linux 6.12 is all the more exciting with it expected to be this year's Long Term Support (LTS) kernel version.

So far Linus Torvalds hasn't issued his customary release announcement for v6.12-rc6 to the mailing list, but will update when it's eventually posted.

Update: Torvalds has now posted his [5]6.12-rc6 announcement :

Another week, another rc. Nothing odd or special seems to be going on - this may be a bit on the bigger side for an rc6, but not hugely so, and nothing stands out.

We've got about 40% of the diff being drivers (networking, gpu, clx, sound, iio..) with the rest being a mix of a bit of everything: tooling, documentation, core MM and networking, filesystems (bcachefs, xfs, btrfs, afs) and some tiny arch fixes.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Linux+6.12

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-2.6p-Faster-Scale-Patch

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Bcachefs-Failures-Drop-40p

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-612-features

[5] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=whORbp07SkmAUbXTRtjk7imEgWXReGMaeteMg-gAFU_cA@mail.gmail.com/T/#u