Linux kernel project manager Linus Torvalds has admitted that he delayed the release of Linux 6.14 by a day due to “pure negligence.” Fortunately, there were no serious consequences from his actions — delays have happened before.
Image Source: Kevin Horvat / Unsplash.com
Traditionally, Torvalds releases new release candidates for the final version of the Linux kernel on Sunday afternoons, and accompanies each post with documentation. If he goes on a business trip or vacation, he usually warns the community so that people don’t worry about not getting updates at the usual time. And on March 16, there was no warning about a delay in his post. “I expect to release the final version of [the Linux kernel] 6.14 next weekend, unless something very unexpected happens,” he wrote. But on March 23, no posts were made in his name.
«I wish there was some excuse for why I didn’t release [the Linux kernel] 6.14 yesterday on the usual Sunday release schedule. I wish I could say that something important happened at the last minute and there was a delay. But no. It was pure negligence. Because absolutely nothing happened at the last minute yesterday, and I was just looking into unrelated things and preparing to merge branches. And in the process, I just forgot to do the release at all. Oh shit!” Linus Torvalds admitted.
His oversight did not have serious consequences: only a small number of developers have a critical need for new kernel versions, and a day’s delay is normal. Linux 6.14 includes new tools for writing drivers in Rust in the future, support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chip, a fix for the GhostWrite vulnerability for some RISC-V processors from T-Head Semiconductor (part of Alibaba), and the NTSYNC driver has been completed – Windows applications in WINE on Linux will start working better. With Linux 6.15, things will be a little more complicated, Torvalds warned. “Judging by my pile of pull requests, [work on the Linux kernel] 6.15 will be much more intense,” he said.