Linux 7.0 debuts as Linus Torvalds ponders AI's bug-finding powers and their impact on release process

Linus Torvalds has released version 7.0 of the Linux kernel.

As The Register has previously reported, kernel boss Linus Torvalds doesn't think kernel version numbers signify anything important, but he feels that once a release series reaches x.19 it's worth rolling over to x.0 to avoid confusion.

His Sunday release announcement for version 7.0 therefore represents a normal kernel release that just happens to feature a round number.

However, Torvalds' release announcement features something a little unusual.

"The last week of the release continued the same 'lots of small fixes' trend, but it all really does seem pretty benign, so I've tagged the final 7.0 and pushed it out," he wrote.

"I suspect it's a lot of AI tool use that will keep finding corner cases for us for a while, so this may be the 'new normal' at least for a while. Only time will tell."

That's an interesting observation in light of kernel dev 2IC Greg Kroah-Hartman's observation that AI has become a truly useful bug-spotter for the kernel maintenance crew. GKH also last week made a pull request that delivered what he described as "some documentation updates to the security-bugs.rst file to hopefully tell the AI tools (and any users that actually read the documentation), how to send us better security bug reports as the quantity of reports these past few weeks has increased dramatically due to tools getting better at 'finding' things."

Probably the most notable inclusion in this release is the conclusion of experimental work to support Rust - meaning the language is now officially supported for kernel development.

Version 7.0 of the kernel also includes more work to support ARM, RISC-V and Loongson processors, and more sophisticated support for KVM virtual machines on AMD EPYC 5 CPUs.

Self-healing XFS is another inclusion, making the filesystem more robust.

The kernel watchers at Phoronix spotted new code for the venerable SPARC and DEC Alpha CPUs

The new kernel is yours to download here. ®