The Release of Linux 6.3

On April 23, 2023, Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced the release of the latest stable version of the Linux kernel, version 6.3. This release follows the previous stable version, Linux 6.2, which was released two months earlier in mid-February.

The source code for Linux 6.3 is already available for download on the kernel.org portal, and the Linux 6.3 kernel release commit can be found on GitHub and the Makefile of Linus Torvalds. According to OpenNET data, Linux 6.3 includes 15,637 fixes from 2,055 developers. The patch size is 76 MB, with changes affecting 14,296 files, adding 1,023,183 lines of code, and removing 883,103 lines of code.

The new version of the Linux kernel contains many changes, updates, and enhancements, including cleaning up outdated ARM platforms and graphics drivers, continued integration of Rust language support, the addition of the hwnoise utility, support for red-black tree structures in BPF, BIG TCP mode for IPv4, built-in Dhrystone performance test, ability to prohibit execution in memfd, support for creating HID drivers using BPF, Rust support added to User-mode Linux, support for building User-mode Linux with clang and link-time optimizations, and more.

Additional functionality related to using the Rust language as a second language for developing kernel drivers and modules continues to be ported from the Rust-for-Linux branch. Rust support is not active by default and does not lead to Rust becoming a mandatory build dependency for the kernel. The state of Rust support in the kernel is close to the point of accepting the first modules written in Rust into the kernel.

The release of the Linux 6.3 kernel is a significant event in the world of open-source software and will have a far-reaching impact on the Linux ecosystem. Users are encouraged to download and install the latest version to take advantage of the many new features and improvements.