14 DAY TRIAL // The development of the Linux 4.14 kernel, the next LTS (Long Term Support) kernel series, is almost over now that the seventh, and probably the last Release Candidate (RC) milestone hit the streets.
Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux kernel 4.14 RC7 last evening as part of his normal Sunday announcements, giving us a heads up to what's coming next to the development cycle of the next LTS Linux kernel branch. Long story short, he didn't yet decide if to push the final Linux 4.14 build next week or an extra RC, which could delay the development of Linux kernel 4.15.
"Considering the issues we've had, I likely will do an RC8 unless this upcoming week ends up being _so_ quiet that there's no point," said Linus Torvalds in the mailing list announcement. "If I end up doing an RC8, that will also push the latter half of the next merge window into the Thanksgiving week, which is going to be inconvenient since I'll be traveling again."
Linux kernel 4.14 LTS launches next month
While RC7 appears to be a normal release, Linus Torvalds want the next long-term supported Linux kernel series to be as stable as possible, so he might just delay the final release with a week and announce the eighth Release Candidate at the end of the week. As for RC7, is contains mostly networking improvements, but there are a few changes to supported filesystems and architectures too.
Therefore, if you want Linux kernel 4.14 LTS to hit the street next week instead of the week after, go ahead and download the Linux kernel 4.14 RC7 source tarball right now from kernel.org or via our web portal and take it for test drive to report bugs. Please keep in mind though that this is a pre-release build, so don't use it in production environments, nor replace your stable kernel with it.