v7.0-rc72026-04-05
Linux Kernel v7.0-rc7 Release Notes
Linux v7.0-rc7 is a stabilization release carrying 352 non-merge commits across networking, USB, IIO sensors, GPU drivers, and more. The dominant themes are memory-safety fixes for unchecked external input, silent wrong-output bugs that produced incorrect data without any error signal, and driver lifecycle correctness in probe/teardown paths. RISC-V and BPF each receive targeted hardening passes, while a coordinated set of AMD GPU fixes closes 64K-page compatibility gaps affecting POWER and ARM64 server deployments.
v7.0-rc62026-03-29
Linux Kernel v7.0-rc6 Release Notes
Linux v7.0-rc6 delivers 435 fixes across a stabilization cycle dominated by lifetime safety work — use-after-free and double-free bugs surfaced by aggressive sanitizer CI across drivers, networking, and filesystems — alongside a concentrated KVM correctness sweep spanning all four major architectures and a new DMA_ATTR_REQUIRE_COHERENT contract that converts silent SWIOTLB coherency violations into clean failures.
v7.0-rc52026-03-22
Linux Kernel v7.0-rc5 Release Notes
Linux v7.0-rc5 is a stabilization release carrying 322 non-merge commits dominated by memory-safety and correctness fixes. Use-after-free bugs in concurrent teardown paths span more than a dozen subsystems, a coordinated BPF verifier hardening campaign closes six distinct verification-bypass vectors, and multiple unauthenticated remote attack surfaces — including an NFSv4.0 heap overflow and an 802.11s mesh crash — are sealed. Operators running Bluetooth services, netfilter firewalls, NFS servers, or encrypted storage should treat this RC as high priority.
v7.0-rc42026-03-15
Linux Kernel v7.0-rc4 Release Notes
Linux v7.0-rc4 is a 472-commit stabilization release dominated by an urgent AppArmor security hardening campaign responding to the Qualys CrackArmor disclosure, a cross-architecture KVM correctness sweep touching arm64, x86, RISC-V, PowerPC, and LoongArch simultaneously, and a recurring pattern of use-after-free and silent data corruption bugs surfacing independently across at least eight subsystems — several of which only manifest in production builds with debug options disabled.
v7.0-rc32026-03-08
Linux Kernel v7.0-rc3 Release Notes
Linux v7.0-rc3 is a stabilization release carrying 459 non-merge commits dominated by error-path and teardown fixes, security hardening (XDP buffer accounting across six NIC drivers, timing side-channel closures in TCP-AO/MD5/SMB, container namespace privilege tightening), and post-merge cleanup of recently landed drivers including AMD XDNA, Apple Silicon macsmc-hwmon, and io_uring zero-copy receive.
v7.0-rc22026-03-01
Linux Kernel v7.0-rc2 Release Notes
Linux v7.0-rc2 is a stabilization release carrying 372 non-merge commits across drivers/net, drivers/gpu, filesystems, networking, and arch/arm64 as the most active subsystems. The cycle is defined by three converging patterns: an epidemic of error-path resource leaks surfacing across more than a dozen unrelated driver families, security mechanisms that silently undermined their own protection (x86 Spectre/FineIBT, ksmbd MAC verification, InfiniBand info-leaks), and refactor-induced silent data corruption where structural changes dropped alignment masks, type casts, or memory-ordering barriers with no error reported.