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⇱ Linux 6.18-rc5 Released: "Small And Boring" - Phoronix


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Linux 6.18-rc5 Released: "Small And Boring"

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 9 November 2025 at 06:23 PM EST. 1 Comment
As we work toward the stable Linux 6.18 kernel release expected around the end of December, out today is the Linux 6.18-rc5 test kernel.

Linus Torvalds christened the Linux 6.18-rc5 kernel just minutes ago. It's been another week of mostly small changes throughout kernel space. The changes on my radar this week include many DRM kernel graphics driver fixes, electronic privacy screen hotkey handling for some Dell laptops, and partially addressing a performance regression that is most prominent on IBM POWER CPUs.

👁 Linux 6.18-rc5 Git tag


Linus Torvalds wrote in the 6.18-rc5 release announcement:
"Things remain calm and small, and everything looks pretty normal. The rc5 diffstat is mostly drivers, with misc random noise in architectures (x86, some risc-v), tooling (mostly just a perf header file sync, some selftest fixes), some core networking, and minor filesystem fixes (xfs, smb, btrfs).

There's a blip in io_uring, but that's mostly removing a new ABI that wasn't quite ready for prime-time.

In other words: it all looks just the way I like it at this point: small and boring."

For details on the changes coming to Linux 6.18 at large can be found via our Linux 6.18 feature overview.

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.