Linus Torvalds jokingly ponders his successor as Linux boss • The Register

Linus Torvalds has pondered his professional mortality in a self-deprecating post to mark the release of the first release candidate for version 7.0 of the Linux kernel.

“You all know the drill by now: two weeks have passed, and the kernel merge window is closed,” he wrote in the post announcing Linux 7.0 rc1. “We have a new major number purely because I’m easily confused and not good with big numbers.”

Torvalds pointed out that the numbers he applies to new kernel releases are essentially meaningless.

“We haven’t done releases based on features (or on “stable vs unstable”) for a long, long time now. So that new major number does *not* mean that we have some big new exciting feature, or that we’re somehow leaving old interfaces behind. It’s the usual “solid progress” marker, nothing more.”

He then reiterated his plan to end each series of kernels to end at x.19, before the next release becomes y.0 – a process that takes about 3.5 years – and then pondered what happens when the next version of Linux reaches a number he finds uncomfortable.

“I don’t have a solid plan for when the major number itself gets big,” he admitted, “by that time, I expect that we’ll have somebody more competent in charge who isn’t afraid of numbers past the teens. So I’m not going to worry about it.”

Fair enough: If Torvalds’ 3.5-year push to reach a new x.0 version remains in place, it will be at least 40 years until the kernel reaches version 19.x – by which time The Register hopes the 56-year-old Torvalds will be happily retired and messing around with guitar pedals or whatever else takes his fancy. Torvalds isn’t just being blithe about this: The Linux community recently developed a succession plan.

Existential musings done, Torvalds got back to business and declared the merge window leading up to his release as “fairly smooth.”

“I define those as the merge windows where I don’t have to bisect boot failures on any of my machines,” he wrote. “Admittedly this time around that was because I caught one failure case early before I *actually* booted into it, but hey, that still technically counts as ‘smooth’ to me.”

He urged penguinistas to “drop everything, run to your computers, and test-build and test-boot a shiny new kernel” to check it out, before backing down a little. “Just kidding,” he wrote. “A leisurely stroll after you’ve finished chewing is fine.”

According to the kernel-watchers at Phoronix the new version of the kernel includes a patch that cements Rust support in the kernel.

Testers will also find code that clear caches more quickly, enable non-disruptive kernel updates, and catch up with recent features in AMD and Intel silicon. Contributors have also added code to improve performance under the RISC-V and LoongArch architectures. And it wouldn’t be a kernel release without some oddities, this time around the removal of a modem driver for some 1990s-era ThinkPads – back when they were still IBM products! ®