- The Linux kernel is the core software that connects computer hardware and programs. According to the source, Linus Torvalds officially released version 7.3, and the merge window for version 7.4 starts the next day.
- The source says this release set records in every metric. Before the merge window, 18,765 commits came in from 3,021 developers, and 807 of them were participating in kernel development for the first time.
- Main changes include extensions to binfmt_misc, group scheduling work aimed at improving performance on large systems, a new filesystem failfs that makes all operations fail, the fchroot() system call, and global per-CPU data for BPF programs.
- It also includes completing sched_ext sub-scheduler features, tracking virtual machine work sets, alternate data stream support for the ntfs3 filesystem, and SMB server improvements. For more details, see two LWN merge window summaries and KernelNewbies' guide page for 7.3.
O: A system administrator who runs Linux servers and is considering adopting the next kernel may want to check, before adding 7.3 to a test virtual machine, whether the features they use are affected by the binfmt_misc or SMB server changes.
X: The source only gives scale figures such as commit and developer counts, with no performance gain numbers, and the actual impact of each change on real environments has not been confirmed.