Linux 6.0 should be with us very soon

Linux boss Linus Torvalds has optimistically announced that version 6.0 of the open-source operating system should be with users very soon, despite some minor delays.

According to his September 18 update (opens in new tab) on release candidate six (Linux 6.0-rc6), a lot of maintainers had been travelling because of the Maintainers’ Summit in Dublin, as well as OSS EU and LPC. For this reason, rc6 was “artificially small”. 

Torvalds continues to discuss the smaller-than-usual size of the release candidate: “Or – putting my ridiculously optimistic hat on – maybe things are just so nice and stable that there just weren’t all that many fixes?”

Linux 6.0 release date

Talking about the latest release candidate – rc7 – on the blog (opens in new tab), Torvalds said he expected it to be “​​larger than usual due to pull requests having shifted one week later” which could lead to the Linux OS needing one further release (number 8). 

Despite expecting that rc7 would be a larger release than usual, it “​​doesn’t really seem to have happened” according to Torvalds’ latest September 25 announcement. “It’s marginally bigger than the historical average for this time of the release cycle, but it definitely isn’t some outlier, and it looks fairly normal.”

He continues to dispel the previous indication that a further rc8 would be required. A successful rc7 makes him think that “the final release will happen right on schedule next weekend, unless something unexpected happens.”

In fact, according to the most recent Linux 6.0 update, it’s “the first time we have a clean ‘make allmodconfig’ build with no warnings from clang”.

Torvalds concludes his message with his hopeful plan of one final week of testing. The probable elimination of that rc8 means that Linux 6.0 looks to be “right on schedule next weekend”, leading us to believe that an early-October release is most likely.