The Linux 6.7 Merge Window Is Massive With Many New Features

The Linux 6.7 merge window has been downright exciting with additions like Nouveau GSP support and the Bcachefs file-system being added. It's also been downright massive as one of the largest merge windows in recent history in terms of code changes. Here's some statistics of the Linux 6.7 merge window ahead of today's Linux 6.7-rc1 release.

There has been a ton of exciting kernel improvements and hardware support additions merged this cycle. There's been the Nouveau GPU System Processor (GSP) firmware support for improving RTX 20 series and newer (as well as initial RTX 40 series support), initial enablement on next-generation AMD graphics, a lot more Intel Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake enablement getting underway, Intel Meteor Lake graphics being declared stable, Intel La Jolla Cove Adapter driver support, ASUS Screenpad support, AMD-Pensando Elba SoC support, and many other new hardware additions.

There's also been other notable changes like Bcachefs finally being mainlined, the Itanium IA-64 architecture being dropped, scheduler improvements, AppArmor IO_uring integration, new Btrfs features, a new "make hardening.config" option for some decent hardening defaults, more FUTEX2, dropping of MIPS AR7, overhauling of the x86/x86_64 CPU microcode loading, and much more.

In the next day or two I'll have up my usual Linux kernel feature overview of all the v6.7 changes I've found most interesting. In the meantime you can see all of my Linux 6.7 content of the interesting merged material all covered separately. But now some numbers on the Linux 6.7 merge window...

On a commit basis, the Linux 6.7 merge window has been massive. There's been 16,176 commits since the Linux 6.6 stable release to master (what will be v6.7-rc1 in a few hours). In comparison, there's usually 12~13k commits per merge window. The Git stats above shows how all other Linux 6.x kernels to date have been in the 12~13k range with the exception of Linux 6.7's merge window being the largest in recent history at 14,595 commits but now blown out of the water with the Linux 6.7 merge window at more than 16.1k.

In terms of code changes, as of this morning since Linux 6.6 there has been 12,667 files changed, 839,107 insertions, 281,192 deletions. A lot of deletions this cycle due to dropping Itanium IA-64 architecture support plus dropping MIPS AR7 platform support as well as dropping some old Ethernet/WiFi networking drivers, etc. Some of the code additions this cycle include more AMDGPU header files and then all of the new feature work. In comparison, the Linux 6.6 merge window saw just 469k lines of new code and 209k deletions. Linux 6.7 on a lines added and deletion perspective is shaping up to be outright massive with this easily being the largest merge window in recent history.

Linux 6.7 is looking quite great and will debut as stable in either the final days of 2023 or the early days of 2024 depending upon how the cycle plays out... Given the massive merge window and the holidays ahead, it's quite possible the Linux 6.7 cycle will be longer than usual. In any event in the next few days I'll have my more comprehensive Linux 6.7 feature overview and will begin firing up more Linux 6.7 kernel benchmarks on hardware in my lab.