Linux creator Linus Torvalds released the 2.6.22-rc7 kernel saying, "it's hopefully (almost certainly) the last -rc before the final 2.6.22 release, and we should be in pretty good shape. The flow of patches has really slowed down and the regression list has shrunk a lot." He briefly summarized the changes in this latest release candidate, "the patches are mostly trivial fixes, a few new device ID's, and the appended shortlog really does pretty much explain it," adding, "final testing always appreciated, of course".

The previous stable kernel, 2.6.21, was released a little over two months ago on April 25'th [story]. An overview of all the changes merged into the latest version of the kernel is maintained in the Kernel Newbies wiki. Included in the list of changes are the SLUB allocator which replaced the slab allocator, a new wireless stack, a new firewire stack [story], and support for the Blackfin architecture. Source level changes can be tracked via the gitweb interface to Linus' kernel tree.

In a humorous announcement for the latest release candidate of the upcoming 2.6.22 Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds noted that there were updates to the ARM, SH and Blackfin architectures. He also noted fixes to USB suspend, infiband, and the network stack, as well as updates to ATA, DVB and MMC, and network drivers. Noting that a three-day weekend was starting in the US he said, "so what's a pasty white nerd to do? You can't go out on the beach, because the goodlooking people will laugh at you, and kick sand in your face. I'm not bitter." Linus continued:

"But now you _can_ do something: you can download the latest -rc kernel, and smile smugly to yourself, knowing that you are running the latest and greatest on your machine. And suddenly it doesn't even matter that summer is coming, because you can just sit in the basement, and close the blinds, and bask in the warm light from your LCD, rather than the harsh glare of the daystar.."

Further information about what's new and changed in the upcoming 2.6.22 kernel can be found in the KernelNewbies wiki. The latest -rc can be downloaded from the Linux Kernel Archives [story], and the source changes can be browsed online using the gitweb interface.

"Ok, the merge window has closed, and 2.6.22-rc1 is out there," Linus Torvalds announced on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. He noted that there were a large number of changes, "almost seven thousand files changed, and that's not double-counting the files that got moved around." As to what was changed, Linus summarized, "architecture updates, drivers, filesystems, networking, security, build scripts, reorganizations, cleanups.. You name it, it's there." He went on to add:

"You want a new firewire stack? We've got it. New wireless networking infrastructure? Check. New infiniband drivers? Digital video drivers? A totally new CPU architecture (blackfin)? Check, check, check.

"That said, I think (and certainly hope) that this will not be nearly as painful as the big fundamental timer changes for 2.6.21, and while there are some pretty core changes there (like the new SLUB allocator, which hopefully will end up replacing both SLAB and SLOB), it feels pretty solid, and not as scary as ripping the carpet from under the timer infrastructure."

Following up to feedback on his merge plans [story], Andrew Morton [interview] posted an updated summary of what he is pushing upstream for inclusion in the upcoming 2.6.22 kernel. His list included, "a few serial bits, a few pcmcia bits, one little security patch, the blackfin architecture, small h8300 update, small alpha update, swsusp updates, m68k bits, and lots of UML updates." He also noted that he'll push some of the memory management queue including, "an enhancement to /proc/pid/smaps to permit monitoring of a running program's working set. The SLUB allocator, it's pretty green but I do want to push ahead with this pretty aggressively with a view to replacing slab altogether. Generic pagetable quicklist management. We have x86_64 and ia64 and sparc64 implementations, but I'll only include David's sparc64 implementation here. I'll send the x86_64 and ia64 implementations through maintainers."