Linus Torvalds has released the final version of the Linux kernel 6.0. As usual, the “big” version number doesn’t mark a particularly big jump.
The Linux kernel 6.0 is ready. But as early as the first release candidate in August, Linus Torvalds explained that this version could just as easily have been given the number 5.20. Torvalds is notorious for not being a fan of high version numbers. He justified the change to 6 by saying that he ran out of fingers and toes to count. However, he announced major changes for version 6.1.
According to the website, Linux 6.0 brings Phoronix Performance improvements for popular processors, including Intel’s Ice Lake Xeon and AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper and EPYC.
More than 1700 developers took part in the work. And of course, according to Torvalds, there would be quite a large number of changes: “After all, we have more than 15,000 non-merge commits all in all”. About 60 percent of the changes are new or updated drivers.
Rust implementation is to come
The switch to the now targeted version 6.1, for which Torvalds had already announced the implementation of Rust for the Linux kernel at the Open Source Summit of the Linux Foundation in Austin, Texas, will probably be more exciting.
The “shortlog of changes” lists the most recent changes, which Torvalds describes as “a little bit of everything”. The much more comprehensive ChangeLog 6.0 contains detailed descriptions of the new features.
