The second release candidate of Linux 7.1 is now available for testing from kernel.org, and it finally addresses a longstanding audio regression on the Steam Deck OLED. The mainline kernel had broken audio support on Valve's handheld for roughly two years, forcing both Valve's downstream kernel and handheld-focused distributions to carry their own workarounds. That fix alone makes this rc worth watching for portable gaming enthusiasts.
Beyond the Steam Deck patch, rc2 brings continued work on the new NTFS file-system driver and a batch of fixes for older AMD GPUs contributed by Valve engineer Timur Kristóf. Intel's Xe driver also picks up Xe3P graphics workarounds and tuning. The kernel's sched_ext scheduler extension received a number of fixes that came out of increased AI-assisted code review and fuzzing, a trend Linus Torvalds flagged in his release announcement, noting the kernel continues to see "more patches than usual, probably due to AI tooling," echoing patterns from the 7.0 cycle.
Torvalds described the release as "fairly normal" once you look past a large but cosmetic rename of KVM selftests to match kernel naming conventions. The rest of the diff is the usual spread of driver fixes, with GPU and networking dominating as expected.
