Linus Torvalds has released the stable Linux 7.1 kernel — actually half a day ahead of schedule, thanks to his travel plans.
Despite a busy cycle that saw a growing number of AI/LLM-reported bugs across the kernel, 7.1 landed on time. It brings a long list of new features: a new NTFS driver, Intel FRED for better performance on Panther Lake and future CPUs, faster Intel Arc Battlemage graphics, improvements for older AMD Radeon GPUs, and plenty more. The full feature overview covers everything in this now-stable release.
The kernel can already be pulled from Git. In his release note, Torvalds explained the early timing — he is simply in a different timezone while traveling — and warned that the upcoming merge window may be “a bit irregular” as he works through part of it offline. As for the final week of changes, he described it as “nothing particularly interesting or scary,” mostly smaller driver updates across GPU, networking, and sound.
Attention now turns to Linux 7.2 and the next kernel cycle.
Source: Phoronix
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