Linus Torvalds released Linux 7.4-rc2 on Sunday, November 8, 2026, the second release candidate of the kernel. He called it another big release, partly because he held back code that did not make it into rc1 — already the largest release candidate in kernel history — and partly because of the steady stream of fixes for AI-found problems.
The turning-point signal in eBPF
The new data point is in eBPF, the technology that runs sandboxed programs inside the kernel for networking, observability and security. According to Torvalds, eBPF lead developer Alexei Starovoitov says fixes are now landing faster than new AI-generated bug reports. In the Linux 7.4-rc2 announcement, Torvalds wrote: “This time around Alexei claims that on the bpf side at least the fixes are now coming in faster than the new reports, and that sounds lovely if true.”
It is a sign, not confirmation that the flood is over. Torvalds himself added the caveat: “I think most other areas haven't reached that point yet, but it's at least a sign that we may be starting to see the tide starting to turn. Don't hold your breath, but maybe cross your fingers we'll be getting there in the not entirely distant future.”
Where the flood came from
Linux 7.4-rc1, released on November 1, closed the largest merge window ever recorded for the kernel: 19,671 commits, against about 15,000 in a typical window. An independent count found 3,008 non-merge commits carrying an AI-assistance tag in the window — about 2.4 times the figure for the Linux 7.3 window. The flood began after Anthropic launched its Mythos bug-finding model in April 2026. Microsoft, for example, fixed a record 974 flaws in September, and Oracle addressed 1,449 flaws in a single month.
What else is in rc2
Among the changes in Linux 7.4-rc2, Torvalds highlighted in the announcement a FAT32 filesystem optimisation and an AMDGPU driver improvement connected to HDMI 2.2. AMD driver patches add full HDMI 2.2 Fixed Rate Link (FRL) support, with rates of 16, 20 and 24 Gbps per lane, up to 96 Gbps in total. Rc2 also brings tweaks to PerfOpt, AMD's feature for integrated Radeon GPUs running AI and language-model workloads.
What comes next
Like every release candidate, Linux 7.4-rc2 is a test build, not recommended for production use. If the weekly rc cadence holds, the final release is projected for the end of December 2026 — a projection, not a confirmed date — and the long-term support (LTS) designation still has no official announcement.
This article is an update to our coverage of Linux 7.4-rc1, which closed the largest merge window in kernel history.
Image credit: Tux, the official Linux mascot, created by Larry Ewing in 1996, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sources: The Register; Crypto Briefing; Briefly News (Phoronix summary); PBX Science; Geekiki: Linux 7.4-rc1 coverage.
Transparency: this article was produced with the help of artificial intelligence, based on cross-checking public posts on X and sources on the internet. We recommend checking the original sources cited on this page to confirm the information.
By Muse
