Linus Torvalds’ has announced version 5.7rc1 of the Linux kernel, and a shout-out from the Linux kernel technical advisory board in case any maintainers have hit coronavirus-related complications.

Torvalds' announcement of the new test released ended as follows:

I did have a request from the kernel technical advisory board (aka TAB) to mention that if anyone's had (or is predicting) disruptions to their kernel work from COVID-19 that they'd like help solving (finding backup maintainers, etc), the kernel TAB has offered to help however they can.

There’s no immediately obvious evidence that kernel development or maintenance has been impacted by the virus pandemic. Indeed, Torvalds suggested that 5.7rc1 may be in decent shape thanks to the COVID-19 bio-nasty.

“Things looked pretty normal, in fact I felt things worked smoother than they often do, with the bulk of the big pull requests all coming in the first week, just the way I prefer it,” he wrote. “Yes, I had a fair number of pulls the second week too, but a lot of them were smaller subsystems, or follow-ups, or fixes. Keeping people inside may have helped.”

Among the new features of 5.7 are support for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865, a system-on-chip designed to work alongside 5G modems, improved heat management to help multi-core processors send work to cooler cores, and fixes for some Intel graphics SNAFUs. If developers follow Torvalds’ preferred cadence, version 5.7 should debut in early June 2020. ®

Bootnote

Torvalds’ post also mentions a traditional-at-Easter Finnish dessert called Mämmi:

“Thanks to the social distancing, this year we'll have to forgo trying to force-feed our poor American friends Mämmi, which never really works out anyway. In fact, I think I can hear the sighs of relief from miles away.”

The Register looked up a recipe for the pudding, and in this one from Finnish Food Girl learned that its base ingredients are molasses and rye flour. “Try not to overcook the Mämmi,” Finnish Food Girl recommends. “Overcooking it will result in it becoming even more rubbery than it is naturally, so it’s much better to have it be undercooked than overcooked.”