Linus Torvalds just announced the release of Linux 6.16-rc3 in marching toward the [1]Linux 6.16 kernel release due out around late July.

Linux 6.16-rc3 pulls in a number of bug fixes for the week. Linux 6.16-rc3 introduces [2]some late Intel TDX changes , [3]a fix for the three decade old Creative SoundBlaster AWE32 ISA sound card so it can work without freezing Linux systems using a modern desktop with PipeWire, [4]reverting Alienware G-Mode key support as it actually hurt performance rather than help, [5]intel PMC SSRAM Telemetry for Lunar Lake and Panther Lake , and various other fixes.

Notably the Linux 6.16-rc3 kernel did not merge [6]this week's Bcachefs pull request due to it containing new feature code alongside fixes. That feature code isn't going to be accepted by Linus Torvalds post-merge-window and no revised pull request containing just the bug fixes ended up being submitted.

Linus Torvalds wrote in the [7]6.16-rc3 announcement :

"So rc2 was smaller than usual, but rc3 seems to be right in the usual ballpark for this time, so everything looks entirely normal.

The diff is dominated by some wireless networking and gpu driver updates, but "dominated" is relative: it's not really anything really huge, it's just that there are few other bigger changes, and so all the rest is fairly small and spread out.

Nothing really stands out to me, so I'll just point people at the shortlog below to get a taste of the kinds of fixes we have."

See the [8]Linux 6.16 feature overview to learn about all the interesting changes for this kernel cycle.



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

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-TDX-VMCALL-Linux-6.16

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-SoundBlaster-AWE32

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Alienware-G-Mode-Linux-Revert

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-PMC-SSRAM-LNL-PTL

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-616-Bcachefs-Late-Feature

[7] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjqni5PduSvcsbkPXzPH9md2do6HUXw9Yqrvjq8e8GNmA@mail.gmail.com/T/#u

[8] https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-616-features