Linus Torvalds says AI has made 'huge' Linux kernel updates the new normal

Linux kernel's Linus Torvalds has declared the project's latest updates to be the "new normal" due to the influence of artificial intelligence (AI). In his weekly state of the kernel update, Torvalds commented that "This rc is huge," noting that it is likely the largest release candidate they've seen in recent years, based on the number of commits.

However, even with its size, Torvalds doesn't express much concern as he attributes much of it to fixes generated by AI tools. Torvalds has a mixed opinion on the role of AI, criticizing certain aspects such as documentation quality and the flood of AI-generated bug reports on the Linux kernel security mailing list. Despite his concerns, Torvalds welcomed AI contributions to the project.

Torvalds expressed that while the rc7 isn't particularly scary, it does contain a large number of smaller changes spread across various components like drivers, filesystems, core networking, and arch code. Despite the size of the update, Torvalds expects the release of Linux 7.2 to proceed as planned next weekend. Version 7.2 doesn't qualify as a long-term support release but will include noteworthy features such as improved scheduling for GPUs and CPUs.