Linux kernel maintainer Linus Torvalds officially announced the release of the first version candidate of Linux 7.2 (Linux 7.2-rc1), marking the end of the 7.2 merge window as planned, and kernel development entering a testing and stabilization phase lasting about eight weeks. It is expected that after completing the release process of subsequent candidate versions and stable versions, Linux 7.2 will provide the kernel foundation for mainstream distributions such as Fedora 45 and Ubuntu 26.10.
In the merge window that just ended, Linux 7.2 introduced a large number of new features and performance optimizations, including Cache Aware Scheduling for multi-core and cache topologies, multiple system performance improvement patches, and the innovative USB4STREAM feature led by Intel. At the same time, the new version also fixes the NTFS driver problem introduced in Linux 7.1, completes the six-year strncpy API cleanup work, and adds the new ARCTIC fan controller driver, AMD ISP4 image signal processing driver and the initial implementation of AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 FRL (Fixed Rate Link) support.
With this round of mergers, the code size of the Linux 7.2 kernel tree has exceeded 43 million lines, further reflecting the continued expansion of the Linux kernel in terms of architecture support, drivers, tool chains, and documentation.
In the official announcement, Linus Torvalds commented on the overall status of 7.2-rc1 that "things look pretty normal" and pointed out that judging from the merge short log, this release statistically continues the normal characteristics of recent versions. He mentioned that this merger once again includes a batch update of AMD header files. This part alone occupies about one-third of the patch volume, mainly the addition of a large number of AMD GPU register definitions.
If you do not consider the centralized submission of this batch of AMD register header files, the change structure of Linux 7.2 remains relatively balanced: driver-related changes account for slightly more than half of the patches, and the rest are distributed in multiple areas such as architecture updates, tools and user space helpers, documentation, and kernel core subsystems. At the driver level, in addition to AMDGPU's HDMI 2.1 FRL support, there are other GPU driver updates and support enhancements for multiple hardware platforms, reflecting the kernel development community's continued focus on the evolution of graphics cards and graphics stacks.
After completing the merge window, the Linux development process will shift to the candidate version iteration and problem fixing phase, during which community developers and distribution maintainers will focus on testing new features and performance changes to ensure the reliability of the final stable version.