Linus Torvalds, principal developer of the Linux Kernel, on Sunday, revealed a great deal of info regarding the availability of the eighth and final Release Candidate (RC) development snapshot of the forthcoming Linux 4.8 kernel.
In his weekly announcement published yesterday, Torvalds stated that Linux kernel 4.8 RC8 is going to be the last stop in the cycle, adding that it will mostly bring a series of minor and random patches to issues highlighted by testers since the release of RC7.
“So as already mentioned last week (and hinted at as a possibility), here’s RC8. Things actually did start to calm down this week, but I didn’t get the feeling that there was no point in doing one final RC, so here we are,” says Linus Torvalds.
“I expect the final 4.8 release next weekend, unless something really unexpected comes up.”
Worth noting, even though the development cycle officially ending and Linux kernel 4.8 set to arrive on next Sunday, it will still take some more time before the final version begins hitting software repositories of all GNU/Linux OS platforms.
As Marius Nestor of Softpedia points out, the Solus team could be the first to embrace Linux 4.8 kernel package, soon to be followed by Canonical which is releasing Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) on October 13, 2016.
Linux kernel 4.8 RC8 sources are available for download at www.kernel.org.