Linus Torvalds: Linux 5.8 is biggest kernel release yet

Version 5.8 of the Linux kernel is ‘perhaps the biggest kernel release ever’. So says Linux founder Linus Torvalds. Nearly a fifth of the files have been changed in the new kernel, although Torvalds says few really significant things stand out.

“I wasn’t expecting it, but 5.8 looks set to be one of our biggest releases ever,” Torvalds wrote in a message to kernel developers. Linux kernel 5.8 has a total of 800,000 new lines of code, 14,000 non-merge commits, and about 20 percent of the source files have been updated.

Torvalds compares the release of the new kernel to other major releases such as Linux 4.9. Until recently, that was the biggest release, but that was because it contained the Greybus subsystem that primed Linux for Google’s Project Ara phones. Other kernel releases were also “artificially large,” he says.

Version 5.8 is still great, without such major releases. “There’s just a lot of development there,” Torvalds says. According to him, there is little really unique about the kernel. “Kernel 5.8 is one of the best, without one particular thing that stands out.” However, there are some major driver changes, including habanalabs and atomisp.

Kernel 5.8 includes updates for Microsoft’s Hyper-V and for arm CPUs, and the exFAT file system. Despite the size of the new kernel, Torvalds expects few problems with the release. “But I knock that off,” he adds.