It was this day exactly 28 years ago that Linux came into the world. All thanks to the efforts of Mr. Linus Torvalds, and what better way to celebrate this occasion than the release of Linux 5.3 rc6!
On the 25th of August, 1991, Torvalds announced the release of a one-of-its-kind, free operating system that didn’t take too long to capture the hearts of people. Accordingly, they started moving their servers to Linux-based distributions considering the benefits of Linux, such as high security and reliability, and low costs.
To this day, many computer users still prefer Linux-based distros over other operating systems for the same reasons. But, Linux isn’t limited to only computers anymore as it can now be found in smartphones, billboards, and even satellites.
Linux isn’t the same as it was several years ago—it took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to come this far. However, one thing is certain: the creation of Linux revolutionized the operating system realm for good.
So if we’re done with taking a trip down the memory lane, let’s delve deeper into the surprise Linus Torvalds has for us in Linux 5.3 rc6.
What’s New
Although this release candidate may not put an end to the development cycle of Linux 5.3, it happens to come with not only bug-fixes and updated networking and RDMA drivers but also a bunch of other features.
This week, the developers have worked towards fixing potential I/O hang upon updating paths (nvme-multipath), correcting misreported EKR ring values (HID), fixing possible deadlocks in ixgbe_service_task() and kprobe_optimizer(), stopping bootparam sanitizing from causing boot regression and various other bug fixes. Not to mention that several memory leak bugs have been fixed with this update as well.
This release candidate also allows users to reset download type to default in Bluetooth, check whether .port_mdb_add exists before it is called, get warned of suspicious RCU usage correctly, and successfully connect ethtool flash device.
Apart from that, work has been done on modules including, but not limited to, KVM, netdevsim, netlink, nfsd4, PCI, and selftests.
Linus also throws shade at another release candidate down the road in case ‘things don’t calm down’ in the next few days.
Conclusion
With 28 years since the creation of Linux, this open-source technology has come a long way. Continuous work is being conducted on the Linux kernel, which powers a variety of popular operating systems such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch Linux.
Furthermore, with Linux Kernel 5.3 close to its inauguration, the future seems quite bright for the Linux world. If you want to get to know more about this release candidate, make sure to check out the official mail worded by the man, Linus Torvalds himself.
