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⇱ Linux 6.18-rc2 Released: "rc2 is on the bigger side" - Phoronix


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Linux 6.18-rc2 Released: "rc2 is on the bigger side"

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 19 October 2025 at 09:42 PM EDT. 3 Comments
Linux 6.18-rc2 is now available with another week's worth of fixes for Linux 6.18, which is anticipated to be this year's Long Term Support (LTS) kernel version.

Since last week's closing of the Linux 6.18 merge window, Linux 6.18-rc2 brings in many different fixes throughout thanks to early testing of this new kernel version. Among the fixes are an assortment of graphics driver fixes, making sure stale information is cleared for AMD Zen reboot reason reports, and cleaning up the Rust formatting and documentation per styling concerns raised by Linus Torvalds. Plus a lot of other fixes throughout the kernel.

👁 Linux 6.18-rc2 Git tag


Linus Torvalds wrote in the 6.18-rc2 announcement:
"No huge surprises here. We had a number of regressions in rc1 reported by Guenter's automated test system, so it's not like this release has been all smooth sailing, but at least _some_ of them turned out to be trivial configuration issues, or in the case of big-endian SH4 they seem to have been "just" bugs in the qemu test environment, not actually new kernel bugs.

End result: rc2 is on the bigger side, and we still have some of the remaining regressions outstanding, but we should be making slow progress. It's fairly early days yet, so I'm not very worried. Things on the whole look fairly normal."

See our Linux 6.18 feature overview to learn more about the changes for this next kernel version that should see its stable debut in early December.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.