Why Linus Torvalds Paused the Linux 6.7 Release Over Christmas

During the Christmas period, Linus Torvalds announced that he will take a short break and will not issue a new kernel version on the usual schedule.

He and the kernel team released Linux 6.7‑rc7 on December 24, but the final Linux 6.7 release will be delayed; instead, Linux 6.7‑rc8 will be published.

"Usually I would publish an rc on Sunday afternoon, but since tomorrow is Christmas Eve, the celebrations will start (or at least I’ll be driving to the store a few times to buy the things we forgot – it’s been a year since we did that). In the last‑minute rush we often hear ‘oh, we need…’, so I’ll push rc7 on Saturday." "As I mentioned in previous mails, everything looks fine and we could follow the normal schedule to ship the final 6.7 next weekend, but I won’t do that because the holidays are here, many people are already on vacation for a week or longer, and plan to be away for the next week as well." "Therefore next weekend will be rc8, which I expect to be small because nobody will be paying much attention around then." "We will probably return to a more normal schedule the following week, perhaps." "In any case, rc7 looks fairly normal. It is a bit larger than rc6 but not dramatically so, and there is nothing strange in it. If you have time and energy, give it a try, but let’s be realistic – I hope things stay very calm; this will be one of those weeks where ‘nothing happens’. Even if you don’t celebrate this time of year, you can enjoy the quiet."

The pre‑Christmas Linux release also included some bug fixes, such as resolving a GPU freeze issue after a reset.

Development of Linux 6.7 is proceeding smoothly, but because of the year‑end holidays Linus decided to postpone the final release by a week, targeting January 7 of the next year, and to open the Linux 6.8 merge window on January 8 to avoid starting on January 1.

The future remains an endless yet beautiful cycle of active kernel development.