On April 16 the new candidate version of the Linux kernel was released, I'm talking about Linux 4.11 Release Candidate 7 and it was announced by Linus Benedict Torvalds, as usual. In the new candidate version, specifically this seventh one, there are some important changes that we will break down below. If you want, you can download it now or wait for the final version that will appear shortly in kernel.org.
As the creator has well commented, Linux 4.11-rc7 may be the last candidate version before the release of the final version if there are no unexpected surprises that require the extension of this phase of rc development beyond what is normal. But if all goes as planned, the next release will be the Final. The truth is that in this version there have not been too many changes, only some culminations in a fairly calm week of development.
Linus has reported this calm in which only some changes have been made in the code, two thirds of them destined to the kernel drivers, and the rest applied to other parts related to updates of various supports of architectures, networks, FS, etc., as well as others changes to the core kernel itself, such as tools, etc. So we can't expect big changes in this final phase before releasing the stable version.
Changes made are diverse, ranging from modifications for fbdev, to btrfs, EFI, cpupower, DRM drivers and others for graphics, SCSI, cpufreq driver, ACPI, tools (turbostat, netfilter, ...), improvements in support for various architectures (ARM, x86, ARM64, IA-64, PA-RISC, ...), Xen, irq, VFS, USB, orangeFS, CIFS, SATA, cgroup, vFGPU, PA-RISC, networks, etc. As you can see in the statement, they are diverse and numerous, but not too large compared to those included in the first weeks of development of the new versions and that are decreasing as they reach the final version ...