Torvalds Releases Linux 7.2 RC5 as Networking Takes Over One-Third of Patch

3 articles · Updated · Open Source For You · Jul 30

Linux 7.2 RC5 landed with a patch Torvalds called “quite massive,” but he said nothing in the code looks alarming ahead of a stable release expected in late August.
More than one-third of the update is networking work, largely hardware-driver changes submitted after developers returned from conferences and merged accumulated patches.
USB changes outpaced graphics-driver updates in an unusual shift for the kernel, while additional fixes touched sound, tty and block devices alongside smaller cleanups.
43,898,743 lines now sit in the kernel source tree, including more than 33 million lines of code, as the project keeps expanding even while dropping legacy support such as i486 code.