Linus Torvalds has officially released the Linux 7.0 kernel, continuing the tradition of bumping the major version number after reaching x.19 rather than marking any single architectural shift. The release lands just in time to power the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, making it the foundation for one of the most widely deployed long-term support distributions.
The feature list is substantial. XFS gains self-healing capabilities, Intel Nova Lake and Crescent Island accelerator enablement continues to expand, and new AMD graphics IP blocks are now active in the kernel. Intel TSX defaults to auto mode, and the kernel finally gets standardized generic I/O error reporting, a long-requested improvement. Performance optimizations are scattered throughout.
The final days before release saw some notable last-minute fixes. A three-year-old out-of-bounds access vulnerability in X.509 certificate handling, exploitable by unprivileged users, was patched alongside bogus hardware error reports on AMD Zen 3 processors. Late additions also included new ASUS device IDs for the Armoury driver and HID codes for AI agent interaction keys expected on upcoming laptops.
With 7.0 out the door, the Linux 7.1 merge window is now open and already stacking up with promising patches.
