Personally, I don't remember such a strange Linux kernel development phase. After the release of the first Release Candidate, which is usually a lot of work, the development of Linux 5.2 was very smooth, so much so that Linus was able to do his work on a ship in the middle of nowhere. Yes there were more shocks in rc6, but everything returned to normal in rc7, so Linus Torvalds decided to release Linux 5.2 yesterday afternoon.
The launch took us a bit by surprise, at least one server: even the same Torvalds hoped to release v5.2-rc8 of the Linux kernel yesterday but, seeing how everything has gone, decided to release the final version. In addition, I was also caught by surprise that he published his email a couple of hours later than his usual time, so, taking into account that he said that rc7 was going to be postponed, I came to think that the postponed was going to be the rc8. This was not the case and we already have a final and "stable" version.
What's new in Linux 5.2
- Like every new release, it includes improved support for a large number of hardware, among which we have wireless hardware from the Logitech brand.
- Includes Sound Open Firmware, which provides support for DSP audio devices.
- New mount API for mounting file systems.
- New open source GPU drivers for ARM Mali devices.
- Support for omitting upper and lower case in EXT4 file system.
- Performance improvements for the BFQ I / O scheduler.
- Bug fixes and security patches.
Linux 5.2 It is now available en kernel.org, so anyone who wants to dare can download their / tarball files and install the new version of the Linux kernel. Personally, I would only recommend it to users who are experiencing very annoying hardware failures. If this is not your case, I think it is best to stay with the kernel version that our Linux distribution offers us. Of course, as always, if you decide to install the new version, do not hesitate to leave your experiences in the comments.