Kernel release status
It looks like things are starting to calm down - rc5 is smaller than the previous rc's this merge window, although it still tracks a bit larger than rc5s historically do."
This development cycle has brought in 13,213 non-merge changesets from 2,166 developers, 404 of whom are first-time kernel contributors. As a result, 7.0 will be the new record holder for the most contributors ever (and possibly for the most first-timers as well). The history so far looks like:
RC Date Commits v7.0-rc1 2026-02-22 12468 12468 v7.0-rc2 2026-03-01 434 434 v7.0-rc3 2026-03-08 537 537 v7.0-rc4 2026-03-15 544 544 v7.0-rc5 2026-03-22 391 391
Stable updates: 6.19.9 and 6.18.19 were released on March 19,
followed by 6.19.10, 6.18.20, 6.12.78, 6.6.130, and 6.1.167 on March 25.