Linux 6.12 Released With Real-Time Capabilities, Sched_Ext, More AMD RDNA4 & More

As expected, minutes ago Linus Torvalds just released the Linux 6.12 kernel as stable. Linux 6.12 brings many new features, new hardware support, and is rounded out by the fact of expected to become this year’s Long Term Support (LTS) kernel version.

Linux 6.12 is heavy on the new features including to finally get the real-time “PREEMPT_RT” support across the finish line in the mainline tree, the sched_ext extensible scheduler code for leveraging eBPF was upstreamed, more AMD RDNA4 enablement work is now upstream ahead of the next-gen Radeon graphics cards launching, Xe2 graphics for Intel Lunar Lake and Battlemage is considered stable, and much more. See the Linux 6.12 features article for an extensive look at all of the new changes and hardware driver support to find in this kernel.

Over the last week there were more bug/regression fixes to land, including more Bcachefs file-system fixes and fixing AMD Ryzen 7000/8000 series hosts from randomly rebooting during virtualization use.

Linus Torvalds has yet to issue his customary v6.12 announcement but those building the kernel from source can fetch it via Git. (Update: Torvalds is now out with his v6.12 release commentary on the LKML.)

Now its onward to the Linux 6.13 merge window that is going to be another release heavy on new features. But for now Linux 6.12 is stable to end out 2024 and likely being this year’s LTS kernel.