Linux 4.15-rc2 is now available for public testing

Dec 4, 2017 16:19 GMT  ·  By

The development cycle of the upcoming Linux 4.15 kernel continues with the second Release Candidate, which was announced this past weekend by Linus Torvalds.

Linus Torvalds kicked off the development of Linux kernel 4.15 last week when he announced the first Release Candidate milestone, which contained most of the changes that will land in the final version, due for release next year. And now he announces the second RC, which is slightly bigger that than the first one.

"It's a slightly bigger RC2 than I would have wished for, but this early in the release process I don't worry about it," said Linus Torvalds in the mailing list announcement, which contains the shortlog with details on the fixes implemented in this second Release Candidate for core kernel, drivers, architectures, filesystems, and networking.

Besides the usual bug fixes and security patches, it would appear that Linus Torvalds is in the process of getting some kernel address-space layout randomization (ASLR) leaks plugged from the Linux 4.15 kernel, and the first step took in this direction was to hash any pointers printed by "%p' as default.

Linux kernel 4.15 could be released in mid-January 2018

Linus Torvalds promises to plug more leaks from the Linux 4.15 kernel during its entire development cycle, and you can help test drive it and report any bugs by downloading the Linux kernel 4.15 RC2 source tarball from kernel.org or via our website, compile, and install it on your GNU/Linux distribution.

However, we have to warn you not to install this pre-release version on a production machine, nor replace your stable kernel with it. The next RC is expected to arrive on Sunday, December 10, and the final release of Linux kernel 4.15 could launch in mid-January 2018 if there won't be any delays along the way.