{
  "id": 19169491,
  "title": "Kernel prepatch 7.4-rc2",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/09/kernel-prepatch-7-4-rc2",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-09T14:55:38.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "LWN",
    "slug": "lwn",
    "url": "https://lwn.net/Articles/1106300/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Linus Torvalds has unveiled the 7.4-rc2 prepatch, a substantial update to the Linux kernel. The patch is particularly large, largely due to numerous automated Coccinelle updates scattered throughout the codebase. However, once these automated updates are removed from the diffstat, the overall structure of the patch appears more conventional. The 7.4-rc2 patch is divided into three primary sections: drivers, accounting for one-third of the changes, with GPU, networking, and sound drivers contributing the most. Networking and BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) combined account for another third, with the final third encompassing the remaining filesystems, memory management (mm), and architecture updates. The majority of these changes are attributed to various AI-related fixes, which have been reported as arriving at a faster rate than the new issues on the BPF side, as claimed by Alexei Starovoitov.",
  "summary": "Linus Torvalds has released the 7.4-rc2 prepatch and it will come as no surprise that it is a large one (\" a big -rc2 to go with the largest ever -rc1 \"). Much of the size was made up of some automated Coccinelle updates that were spread out all over the tree; once those are factored out, the rest looks fairly normal: When masking that noise out from the diffstat, the shape of it changes - not…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}