Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 5.18-rc6 as the latest weekly release candidate, with the Linux 5.18 stable release expected in late May. Torvalds summarizes the new Linux 5.18-rc6 beta candidate as follows:
5.18 looks like it’s going to be one of the bigger commits (we’ll see where it ends up – it’ll be neck and neck with 5.14 now, but not as big as 5.13). However, despite the large merge window, the size of release candidates is generally modest, and RC6 continues this trend. I was expecting the “second boot” to land, but the 5.18 seemed to be “pretty well-behaved”.
rc6 looks to have mostly introduced some driver updates (network drivers and rdma stand out, some small random fixes elsewhere), but also some common architecture updates (x86 KVM fixes, and a long-standing x86 Kernel FP usage issues, and some parisc and PowerPC fixes), in addition to some self-test updates for wireguard.
See Torvalds’ other pleasant comments on the kernel mailing list:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/ CAHk-=wi0vqZQUAS67tBsJQW+dtt89m+dqA-Z4bOs8CH-mm8u2w@mail.gmail.com/ _
The Linux 5.18 stable release will be released in 2-3 weeks, depending on how the rest of the cycle plays out.