{"id":808806,"date":"2026-08-10T09:18:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T09:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/808806\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T09:18:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T09:18:35","slug":"linux-7-2-rc7-released-following-another-exhausting-ai-driven-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/808806\/","title":{"rendered":"Linux 7.2-rc7 Released Following Another Exhausting AI-Driven Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"LINUX KERNEL\" src=\"https:\/\/www.phoronix.com\/assets\/categories\/linuxkernel.webp\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/><br \/>\nLinux 7.2-rc7 is now available for testing as we close in on the official <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phoronix.com\/search\/Linux+7.2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Linux 7.2<\/a> release hopefully next weekend.<\/p>\n<p>By the time the Linux kernel typically hits a -rc7 release things have usually settled quite well. But in today&#8217;s world of AI\/LLM coding\/review agents, the kernel activity continues at an all-time high. Tons of bug fixes continued to trickle in across the kernel spectrum for all sorts of issues. The HWMON hardware monitoring subsystem saw <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phoronix.com\/news\/Linux-7.2-rc7-HWMON\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">several critical and high severity bug fixes<\/a>, on the memory management side was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phoronix.com\/news\/Linux-7.2-rc7-UAF-PTDUMP\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a nasty race condition leading to a use-after-free<\/a> in the kernel for the past eight years, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phoronix.com\/news\/Btrfs-Restores-Fixup-Worker\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Btrfs restored its fixup worker infrastructure to deal with silent data loss<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phoronix.com\/news\/Linux-Net-Bombarded-AI-Patches\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">lots of AI patches in the networking realm<\/a>, and the kernel was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phoronix.com\/news\/Linux-Safe-RET-Interrupt-Vuln\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">patched for the Safe RET Interrupt Vulnerability<\/a>.&#13;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786353515_994_image.webp\" alt=\"Linux 7.2-rc7 Git tag\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Linus Torvalds wrote in the <a href=\"https:\/\/lore.kernel.org\/lkml\/CAHk-=wiDq_aaSkBgTN=SGpa5bfTsRGvwhg8sJcFyWgPFf4x0HA@mail.gmail.com\/T\/#u\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">7.2-rc7 announcement<\/a>:<br \/>\n<br \/>&#8220;Another week, another -rc.&#13;<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t say that I&#8217;m exactly thrilled about the size of this all, but it is what it is: the new normal with a lot of fixes, many of them due to review by various AI tools.&#13;<\/p>\n<p>And nothing looks particularly scary per se &#8211; it&#8217;s just that there&#8217;s a lot here. Most of it is fairly small, although we have a couple of larger diffs: s390\/zcrypt fixes stand out in the diffstat, and so does btrfs bringing back the fixup worker infrastructure. And some netfilter ipset fixes.&#13;<\/p>\n<p>But aside from a few places like that, most of this is just lots of tiny fixes. It&#8217;s pretty much spread all over &#8211; drivers (gpu, sound, networking, you name it), filesystems, core networking, arch code..&#13;<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t currently see any value in delaying the 7.2 release, so I would expect that to happen next weekend unless something really bad pops up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully Linux 7.2 stable will manage to make it out next Sunday, 16 August, otherwise it will be delayed one week if a Linux 7.2-rc8 is warranted. When this new kernel does release, there are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phoronix.com\/review\/linux-72-features\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a lot of new features\/changes with Linux 7.2<\/a>. The Linux 7.2 kernel is also what will be the default kernel of the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release and other upcoming Linux distribution releases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Linux 7.2-rc7 is now available for testing as we close in on the official Linux 7.2 release hopefully&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[7278,7277,7275,7274,7281,7279,7276,7280,7273,7284,74,7282,7283],"class_list":["post-808806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-desktop-linux","tag-linux-benchmarking","tag-linux-hardware-benchmarks","tag-linux-hardware-reviews","tag-linux-how-to","tag-linux-performance","tag-linux-server-benchmarks","tag-open-source-graphics","tag-phoronix","tag-phoronix-test-suite","tag-technology","tag-ubuntu-benchmarks","tag-ubuntu-hardware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}