The first release candidate for Linux kernel 6.8, which primarily includes driver, filesystem, and arch updates, was announced by Linus Torvalds.
Linux kernel 6.8-rc1 released
So this wasn't the most pleasant merge window, but most of the unpleasantness was entirely unrelated to the code base and almost entirely related to nasty weather. Just a few technical hiccups. And after a very big 6.7 release, 6.8 looks to actually be smaller than average, although not really all that significantly so.
And while maybe a bit smaller than usual (I blame the holidays), things generally look pretty normal. The bulk is driver updates (GPU and networking drivers are the big areas as always, but there's a bit of everything), but we've also got a fair chunk of filesystem updates (mainly core vfs, bcachefs, xfs and btrfs) and obviously all the usual arch updates.
The rest is all over: docs, tooling, core kernel, mm and networking. My mergelog below gives some kind of high-level overview.
Let the testing and calming down begin,
Linus
Full source: https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/t/linux-6.8-rc1.tar.gz
Patch: https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/p/v6.8-rc1/v6.7
You can view the summary of the changes at the following URL:
https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/ds/v6.8-rc1/v6.7
Al Viro (6):
minixfs updates
rename updates
dcache updates
misc filesystem updates
nfsctl update
bcachefs locking fix
Alex Williamson (1):
VFIO updates
Alexander Gordeev (2):
s390 updates
more s390 updates
Alexandre Belloni (2):
i3c updates
RTC updates
Amir Goldstein (1):
overlayfs updates
Andreas Gruenbacher (1):
gfs2 updates
Andrew Morton (3):
MM updates
non-MM updates
misc hotfixes
Aneesh Kumar (1):
powerpc fixes
Anna Schumaker (1):
nfs client updates
Ard Biesheuvel (1):
EFI updates
Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo (1):
perf tools updates
Arnd Bergmann (5):
asm-generic cleanups
SoC DT updates
SoC driver updates
ARM SoC code updates
ARM SoC defconfig updates
Bartosz Golaszewski (2):
gpio updates
gpio fixes
Bjorn Andersson (3):
rpmsg updates
remoteproc updates
hwspinlock updates
Bjorn Helgaas (1):
pci updates
Borislav Petkov (7):
EDAC updates
x86 microcode updates
misc x86 updates
x86 paravirt updates
x86 SEV updates
x86 cpu feature updates
x86 RAS updates
Chandan Babu (2):
xfs updates
xfs fix
Christian Brauner (8):
misc vfs updates
vfs super updates
vfs mount updates
vfs rw updates
vfs cachefiles updates
vfs iov_iter cleanups
vfs fixes
netfs updates
Christoph Hellwig (2):
dma-mapping updates
dma-mapping fixes
Chuck Lever (1):
nfsd updates
Corey Minyard (1):
IPMI updates
Damien Le Moal (1):
ata updates
Dan Williams (1):
CXL (Compute Express Link) updates
Daniel Thompson (1):
kgdb update
Dave Airlie (3):
drm updates
drm fixes
more drm fixes
Dave Hansen (2):
x86 SGX updates
x86 TDX updates
David Howells (1):
afs updates
David Kleikamp (1):
jfs updates
David Sterba (1):
btrfs updates
David Teigland (1):
dlm updates
Dennis Zhou (1):
percpu updates
Dmitry Torokhov (1):
input updates
Eric Biggers (2):
fscrypt updates
fscrypt fix
Gabriel Krisman Bertazi (1):
unicode updates
Gao Xiang (2):
erofs updates
erofs fixes
Geert Uytterhoeven (1):
m68k updates
Greg KH (5):
char/misc and other driver updates
driver core updates
staging driver updates
tty / serial updates
USB / Thunderbolt updates
Guenter Roeck (2):
hwmon updates
hwmonfix
Hans de Goede (1):
x86 platform driver updates
Helge Deller (3):
fbdev updates
parisc updates
fbdev fix
Herbert Xu (1):
crypto updates
Huacai Chen (1):
LoongArch updates
Ilya Dryomov (1):
ceph updates
Ingo Molar (1):
locking updates
Ingo Molnar (16):
x86 apic updates
x86 asm updates
x86 boot updates
x86 build updates
x86 cleanups
x86 core updates
x86 entry updates
objtool fixlet
debugobject update
generic syscall updates
CPU hotplug updates
timer subsystem updates
irq subsystem updates
performance events updates
scheduler updates
scheduler fix
Ira Weiny (1):
libnvdimm updates
Jaegeuk Kim (1):
f2fs update
Jakub Kicinski (1):
networking fixes
James Bottomley (2):
SCSI updates
SCSI updates
Jan Kara (2):
small quota cleanup
fsnotify updates
Jarkko Sakkinen (1):
tpm updates
Jason Gunthorpe (2):
rdma updates
iommufd updates
Jassi Brar (1):
mailbox updates
Jens Axboe (4):
block updates
io_uring updates
io_uring fixes
block fixes
Jiri Kosina (1):
HID updates
Joerg Roedel (1):
iommu updates
Johan Hovold (1):
GNSS updates
John Johansen (1):
AppArmor updates
John Paul Adrian Glaubitz (1):
sh updates
Jonathan Corbet (2):
documentation update
documentation fixes
Juergen Gross (1):
xen updates
Julia Lawall (1):
coccinelle updates
Kees Cook (3):
pstore updates
hardening updates
strlcpy removal
Kent Overstreet (4):
bcachefs updates
header cleanups
header fix
more bcachefs updates
Lee Jones (3):
mfd updates
LED updates
backlight updates
Linus Walleij (1):
pin control updates
Luis Chamberlain (2):
sysctl updates
module updates
Mark Brown (4):
regmap updates
regulator updates
spi updates
spi fix
Masahiro Yamada (1):
Kbuild updates
Masami Hiramatsu (1):
probes update
Mauro Carvalho Chehab (1):
media updates
Max Filippov (1):
Xtensa updates
Michael Ellerman (1):
powerpc updates
Michael Tsirkin (1):
virtio updates
Michal Simek (1):
microblaze updates
Mickaël Salaün (1):
Landlock updates
Miguel Ojeda (3):
Rust updates
clang-format updates
auxdisplay update
Mike Rapoport (1):
memblock update
Mimi Zohar (1):
integrity updates
Miquel Raynal (1):
mtd updates
Namjae Jeon (1):
exfat updates
Neeraj Upadhyay (1):
RCU updates
Palmer Dabbelt (2):
RISC-V updates
more RISC-V updates
Paolo Abeni (1):
networking updates
Paolo Bonzini (1):
kvm updates
Paul Moore (3):
audit updates
selinux updates
security module updates
Rafael Wysocki (6):
ACPI updates
thermal control updates
power management updates
more power management updates
more ACPI updates
more thermal control updates
Richard Weinberger (2):
UBI and UBIFS updates
UML updates
Rob Herring (2):
devicetree updates
devicetree header detangling
Russell King (1):
ARM updates
Sebastian Reichel (2):
HSI update
power supply and reset updates
Shuah Khan (3):
nolibc updates
KUnit updates
kselftest update
Stephen Boyd (1):
clk updates
Steve French (4):
smb client fixes
smb server updates
more smb server updates
smb client updates
Steven Rostedt (2):
tracing updates
eventfs updates
Takashi Iwai (2):
sound updates
sound fixes
Takashi Sakamoto (1):
firewire updates
Ted Ts'o (1):
ext4 updates
Tejun Heo (1):
cgroup updates
Thierry Reding (1):
pwm updates
Thomas Bogendoerfer (1):
MIPS updates
Thomas Gleixner (1):
timer updates
Tzung-Bi Shih (2):
chrome platform updates
chrome platform firmware updates
Ulf Hansson (2):
pmdomain updates
MMC updates
Uwe Kleine-König (1):
pwm fixes
Vinod Koul (3):
soundwire updates
phy updates
dmaengine updates
Vlastimil Babka (1):
slab updates
Will Deacon (2):
arm64 updates
arm64 fixes
Wim Van Sebroeck (1):
watchdog updates
Wolfram Sang (1):
i2c updates
