Linux 6.19-rc2 Released: A Quiet Week's Work
The second weekly release candidate of Linux 6.19 is now available for testing, leading up to the stable release in early February. This release comes with a week's worth of early bug and regression fixes following the closure of the Linux 6.19 merge window.
One notable fix addresses a specific issue with Seagate Barracuda hard drives, where the SATA bus with Link Power Management (LPM) enabled causes problems. This fix is a safe addition, as it only introduces new vendor/device IDs. Additionally, support for CRKD guitar controllers has been added to the XPad driver, although it's not a traditional fix.
Linus Torvalds, in the 6.19-rc2 announcement, noted that this release is relatively quiet, with fewer commits and a smaller diff compared to previous releases. About a third of the patch consists of self-tests and documentation updates. Another third includes driver updates, with GPU and networking updates being the bulk of it, as is customary. The final third covers architecture, filesystem, networking, and core kernel fixes.
Despite the quiet nature of the release, Torvalds encourages early testing and invites users to enjoy a break from the usual hustle, perhaps breaking the boredom with some early rc testing.
For a comprehensive overview of the changes in this major Linux kernel release, visit the Linux 6.19 feature overview.
