The Register hasn't needed to spend much time covering Linux 4.11 because hiccups haven't happened and Linux daddy Linus Torvalds' comments have been sparse and measured, other than a slightly terse lesson on how to Pull properly.

But today he's posted that this version of Linux has hit a speed bump in the form of “NVMe power management that apparently causes problems on some machines.”

“It's not entirely clear what caused the [NVMe] issue (it wasn't just limited to some NVMe hardware, but also particular platforms), but let's test it.” Which sounds like a good idea, given that flash memory on the PCIe bus is increasingly mainstream.

That problem and “a couple of really annoying” bugs mean that Torvalds has decided to do an eighth release candidate for Linux 4.11.

“I did get fixes for the issues that popped up, so I could have released 4.11 as-is,” Torvalds wrote, “but it just doesn't feel right.”

“It's not like another week of letting this release mature will really hurt,” he adds, before wrapping up his Sunday afternoon post with “So go out and test, guys and gals, and make sure that I can do a final release next weekend instead, ok?” ®