Linus Torvalds released Linux 7.2-rc1 and closed the merge window on June 28th. It is one of the busiest cycles in years: around 13,400 non-merge changes, the most since 7.0. The kernel tree also crossed 43 million lines of code along the way. The stable release is expected after roughly eight weeks of testing, around the end of August, and will land in Fedora 45 and Ubuntu 26.10. Here is an overview of what already made it into the tree.

Cache Aware Scheduling

The biggest scheduler change. The new CONFIG_SCHED_CACHE option teaches the scheduler to think about cache. On modern CPUs with many L3 domains (multi-LLC), typical of EPYC or large Intel parts, the scheduler now tries to group related tasks into the same cache domain instead of scattering them across the whole chip. Fewer trips between cores means fewer cache misses and better data locality. This addresses a structural blind spot that had been around for a long time.

sched_ext: Sub-Schedulers Continue

The sub-scheduler support in sched_ext that began in 7.1 continues. It is the foundation for separate scheduling policies per control group, written in BPF. The end goal is one scheduler for a database and another for batch jobs on the same machine.

Rust Moves Forward

  • The zerocopy crate was brought into the kernel, providing low-cost memory-manipulation primitives and isolating unsafe code.
  • The s390 architecture (IBM mainframes) gained Rust support.
  • New “higher-ranked lifetime types” better tie a driver’s lifetime to the device it is bound to.

The End of strncpy()

After six years of work, the strncpy() API is gone from the tree. The function had long been a source of bugs because it does not guarantee null termination and silently truncates data. Removing it is a milestone in the multi-year hardening of string operations in the kernel.

Filesystems and Storage

  • Btrfs now uses large folios by default, with experimental support for 2 MB folios. On top of that come improvements to RAID handling and error recovery.
  • XFS support for zoned storage devices is no longer experimental. Online fsck and the allocator also got improvements.
  • ext4 refined journaling and lower latency on metadata operations.
  • iomap gained fs-verity support, and separately an optimization landed that moves a memset off the hot path, giving about 5% more IOPS on ext4 and XFS. We covered it separately.
  • openat2() got the O_EMPTYPATH flag, allowing you to reopen an O_PATH descriptor to reach the file behind it.

Drivers and Hardware

GPU:

  • Initial AMDGPU support for HDMI 2.1 FRL, meaning higher resolutions and refresh rates over HDMI
  • Intel USB4STREAM

CPU and platforms:

  • Apple M3 boots on mainline, for now only to a console. Support is very early, but it is visible progress from the Asahi effort.
  • AMD ISP4 driver (image signal processor)
  • Switchtec PCIe Gen6 switch controller
  • Configuration driver for OneXPlayer handhelds
  • ARCTIC fan controller driver

When the Stable Release Arrives

7.2 is now in the release candidate phase. Over the coming weeks more RCs will ship with fixes only, until the kernel stabilizes. Final 7.2 is expected around the end of August 2026. It is a non-LTS release, so it will first reach rolling distributions and Fedora 45, then Ubuntu 26.10 as an optional kernel.

If you want to test the RCs, do it on a machine whose data you do not care about. This is still pre-production code.

Sources: Phoronix, 7.2-rc1, Phoronix, expected features, LWN, 7.2 merge window, WebProNews