Linux 7.2-rc6 Released: "This RC Is Huge" - Phoronix

Articles & Reviews

News Archive

Forums

Premium Ad-Free<br>Contact

Popular Categories

Close

Articles & Reviews

News Archive

Forums

Premium

Contact

Categories

Computers Display Drivers Graphics Cards Linux Gaming Memory Motherboards Processors Software Storage Operating Systems Peripherals

Linux 7.2-rc6 Released: "This RC Is Huge"

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 2 August 2026 at 07:38 PM EDT. 1 Comment

Like clockwork, the Linux 7.2-rc6 kernel is now available for testing in working toward the stable Linux 7.2 kernel in hopefully two week's time.

Linux 7.2-rc6 is out with another heavy round of bug fixing... Following the recent uptick in fixes and other Linux kernel patches as a result of AI/LLM coding agents. The sound fixes were far more than wished at this stage of development. The Linux DRM kernel graphics driver fixes also came in heavy. Among many other changes to land this week were working around buggy Western Digital SATA drives and some AMD Zen 5 CPU models being mistakenly identified as Zen 6.

Linus Torvalds wrote in the 7.2-rc6 announcement:<br>"Hmm. This rc is huge. Even by the "new normal" standards this is a big rc, and I think it's the biggest rc6 we've had in years at least by commit count.

The stats don't look particularly strange: it's just under 60% drivers, 20% networking, and 20% "rest" (arch, tooling, filesystems - nothing particularly odd). And that driver side is the usual gpu and networking drivers, but not exclusively so - we have sound, spi, ata etc in there too.

So a lot of networking stuff, which is at least partly the whole continued backlog from conference timing. I hope that's all there is to this, but it is a bit unnerving how bit the changes are at this point, even if nothing in here actually looks all that strange.

There's nothing in here that screams "bad" or implies that the release needs delaying, but I sure hope we calm down for the remaining two weeks."

See the Linux 7.2 feature overview for more details on the changes to find in this kernel version debuting later in August.

1 Comment

Tweet

Linux's crypto_rng Abstraction Layer Next On The Chopping Block<br>Linux 7.2-rc5 Released: "Once More We Have Quite A Massive -rc5"<br>Linux 7.2-rc4 Released: Looking Like The "New Normal"<br>Legion Y700 Gen4 Tablet Powered By Snapdragon 8 Elite Seeing Linux Patches<br>Linus Torvalds Reaffirms That Linux Is Not "Anti-AI" & Not A "Social Warrior" Project<br>New Linux Patches Aim To Better Handle Multiple Swap Devices

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To Windows<br>The First Open-Source Firmware Released For Modern AMD Ryzen AM5 Platform<br>Arch Linux AUR Under Another Wave Of Malicious Packages, Package Adoptions Halted<br>"KVM Chainsaw" Expected To Hit Linux 7.3 For Dealing With God Data Structure<br>AMD P-State Linux Driver Patches Can Boost 1%-Low FPS Gaming Performance By 31%<br>Kiwi Menu Continues Bringing macOS Vibes To GNOME<br>Starling: A New Linux Desktop Written In Swift, Own Wayland Compositor & Written With AI<br>DRM Format Modifiers For Old AMD GPUs Coming With Linux 7.3: Thanks Valve

AerynOS Issues First Development Update & New ISOs In Three Months

Linux 7.2-rc6 Released: "This RC Is Huge"

Linux 7.3 To Begin Laying The Groundwork For Intel Starfire

Ubuntu Touch Making Progress Toward Ubuntu 26.04, Vulkan & App Updates

Linux 7.2-rc6 Fixes Some AMD Zen 5 CPUs Being Mistakenly Identified As Zen 6

Box64 v0.4.4 Released With New Box64-Configurator App

Steam On Linux Use Back Above 4% In July

NetBSD 11.0 Released With RISC-V Support, Enhanced Linux System Call Compatibility

MPEG-4 Patent Expiration, RADV On Windows, Open-Source AI & Other July Highlights

Prominent Arch Linux Developer Resigns After 10 Year Run

Phoronix Premium allows ad-free access to the site, multi-page articles on a single page, and other features while supporting this site's continued operations.

Nouveau vs. NVIDIA R610 On CachyOS With The GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU

CachyOS Outperforming Windows 11, Slight Advantage Over Ubuntu & Fedora On AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470

Framework Laptop 13 Pro: Aiming To Be One Of The Best Upgradeable Linux Laptops

Snapdragon X Elite Laptop Experience Still Lackluster On Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

AMD EPYC 9006 Venice Announced & Looks Poised To Be A Grand Slam

The mission at Phoronix since 2004 has centered around enriching the Linux hardware experience. In addition to supporting our site through...