In May, Linux overlord Linus Torvalds warned that his holiday might delay the release of Linux 4.1.

That scenario's now come to pass, with the benevolent dictator of the penguin palace posting that he's off on his vacation.

“So I'm on vacation, but time doesn't stop for that, and it's Sunday, so time for a hopefully final rc,” Torvalds writes. “It turns out it's just as well that I wanted to drag the release out by a week so that I don't have the merge window while on vacation.”

Torvalds says there are some fixes in the works before he's happy to sign off on Linux 4.1, notably to drivers, adding that “most” of the required changes “are very small, so I don't think this is particularly worrisome. It's just that rc8 works out not just because of my timing, but due to continuing small details cropping up.”

“Let's make next week really calm, shall we,” he entreats his fellow devs. “Because I will very actively try to avoid having to read email.” ®