Linux 7.4 Release Candidate Includes Surge in AI Related Patches

Nov 2, 2026
Linux 7.4 enters testing with nearly 20,000 commits as AI finds more issues and suggests a growing number of patches.

Linus Torvalds released the first Linux 7.4 release candidate after a large merge window, according to his Linux Kernel Mailing List post archived by LWN.net. The release contains nearly 20,000 commits, compared with about 15,000 in a typical merge window.

Torvalds linked much of the increase to work prompted by AI. "I'm much happier with the flood of AI triggered work going into the merge window than it showing up mainly as extra fixes during the -rc period," he wrote. AI tools found many of the addressed issues and suggested a growing number of patches, although developers often rewrote those patches. He said this work is increasingly arriving during normal development rather than during the stabilization period.

About half of the changes involve drivers when large AMD GPU header updates are excluded. The remaining work covers architectures, file systems, performance tools, self tests, networking, Rust, BPF and memory management. Torvalds also noted that expectations for Linux 7.4 to become the next long term support release may have increased the volume of changes.

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