Linus Torvalds announces the third release candidate for Linux 6.15, highlighting minor improvements and a stable development cycle—with only one hiccup related to GCC.
Linus Torvalds released Linux 6.15-rc3 on Sunday, April 20, right on schedule and coinciding with Easter. In his usual weekly message to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Torvalds emphasized that this release includes a “fair number of small fixes all over the place,” with no major changes or regressions.
“The biggest changes are to fix some ublk driver issues, and the related selftests for same. The rest is generally one- or few-lines,” Torvalds noted.
Focus on Stability, Not New Features
As with most -rc3 releases, the focus is on refining what’s already there. The spotlight this time is on improvements to the ublk driver, a relatively new subsystem enabling efficient user-space block drivers. Associated self-tests have also been updated to ensure greater reliability.
Outside of ublk, the changes are minor and touch on various subsystems including networking, DRM, crypto, perf tools, memory management, and more. Hundreds of contributors submitted small patches that continue to push the kernel forward in incremental but meaningful ways.
A Smooth Development Cycle
Despite a larger-than-usual merge window for Linux 6.15, Torvalds reports that things have gone smoothly so far:
“That doesn’t seem to have resulted in any particular pain. At least so far. Knock wood.”
He wrapped his initial message with a light Easter wish to the community, joking about traditional Finnish desserts like mämmi and encouraging everyone to “celebrate with a new release candidate.”
One Setback with GCC Compatibility
Later the same day, Torvalds issued a quick follow-up after a community member reported that his recent GCC 15 build fixes broke compatibility with GCC 14. He acknowledged the mistake and quickly pushed a fix, musing that perhaps such updates should be done mid-week rather than on weekends when release candidates are also managed.
“Hopefully everybody is too busy eating strange Easter desserts that nobody else even noticed.”
What’s Next for Linux 6.15?
Linux 6.15 is progressing through the release candidate phase and is expected to reach a stable release within a few weeks, assuming no serious issues arise. As usual, Torvalds encourages developers, testers, and vendors to try out this version, report any bugs, and contribute to the ongoing effort to keep Linux stable and performant.
Try Linux 6.15-rc3
Download the release candidate from the official Linux kernel repositories:
🔗 https://git.kernel.org
📥 https://www.kernel.org
Final Thoughts
While this release may not bring flashy new features, it represents the steady, reliable progress that has made Linux the world’s most widely used open-source operating system. For users, developers, and sysadmins alike, the best way to contribute is to test early, test often—and maybe enjoy a little mämmi along the way.
