Linux kernel 7.0 is out now

The Linux kernel 7.0 has arrived and with it plenty of support for new hardware, lots of fixes and some new documents on AI code helpers.

From the release announcement Linus Torvalds said:

The last week of the release continued the same "lots of small fixes" trend, but it all really does seem pretty benign, so I've tagged the final 7.0 and pushed it out.

I suspect it's a lot of AI tool use that will keep finding corner cases for us for a while, so this may be the "new normal" at least for a while. Only time will tell.

Anyway, this last week was a little bit of everything: networking (core and drivers), arch fixes, tooling and selftests, and various random fixes all over the place.

Let's keep testing, and obviously tomorrow the merge window for 7.1 opens. I already have four dozen pull requests pending - thank you to all the early people.

On the subject of AI coding and the Linux kernel, they recently formalised some documentation on it that does allow AI coding assistants to be used for kernel work. To be clear on that the AI tool used must be noted and the human submitter is responsible for reviewing output, ensuring it complies with licenses and taking full responsibility for it.

Some quick highlights:

• Work towards upcoming AMD GPUs.
• AMDGPU fixes for older Radeon GPUs.
• Improved NTFS filesystem support.
• Improved Intel Nova Lake support.
• XFS filesystem gained self-healing features.
• EXT4 filesystem saw improved write performance for concurrent direct I/O writes.
• Support for Rock band 4 PS4 and PS5 guitars.
• Expanded support for keyboard AI keys.

The Linux kernel team don't really do a breakdown like you might expect from other projects, mainly due to the insanely vast size of it, so we all have to sleuth over what we can gather from all the code requests sent in. You can see all the changes in the full technical changelog. You can also see more of a breakdown from our friends at Kernel Newbies and Phoronix.