In Linux version 4.19-rc4 of the kernel already we heard the news about Linus Torvalds. In the mail published in the LKML he apologized for his behavior and announced that he was temporarily withdrawing from the Linux project to get help on his behavior and also to perhaps dedicate himself to another project like when he did git. However, I hope that he will return soon, perhaps around 4.20 as some relevant people from the US have told me, but the truth is that we do not know for sure when he will rejoin ...
Well, now comes the next stage of development, since the project, despite the fact that its creator has moved away, does not stop. As we well know, the German Greg Kroah-Hartman He is Linus's right-hand man and the one who would inherit the project when Linus retires or is gone. And that is what he has done now, in this temporary retirement of Linus he has remained in command, so the kernel is in good hands. He has been in charge of publishing the mail in the LKML announcing the launch of Linux 4.19-rc5, that is, the fifth Release Candidate. This is the first RC after the departure of Linus, as we have said. Greg took the opportunity to say that this week has been interesting from a social point of view for what happened. And he also took the opportunity to say that from a technical point of view the rc5 is a fairly normal launch, without notable problems or anything like that. The most notable changes refer to the x86 and PPC architectures, network drivers, sound drivers and ASLA, DRM / AMD GPU, etc., as usual.
Other changes that have been introduced also refer to Bluetooth, Xen, KVM, SCSI, ARM, ext4, and other subsystems, although mainly the most relevant changes are those of the previous paragraph. And I end by saying that Greg has also encouraged people to download this new version from kernel.org and test it to see if everything works properly or if something goes wrong that reports problems so that they can be fixed before the release of the final kernel version 4.19.