← Sunday, October 18, 2026Performance & OSDeep dive

Linux 7.2 had its second-busiest development cycle, with 16,418 commits

lwn.net 23 min read Editor score 7/10

The release added nearly 600,000 lines through 16,418 non-merge commits from 2,652 developers, with contributions broader than the previous record-setting cycle. The figures offer a useful view of how a major open-source project’s development workload is changing.

What

Linux 7.2 brought 16,418 non-merge commits into mainline, making it the kernel's second-busiest release.

How

The commits came from 2,652 developers; unlike the bcachefs-dominated 6.7 cycle, 7.2's volume was broad-based.

Why it matters

For engineers maintaining large systems, the figures show the scale and breadth of coordination behind kernel releases.

Read on lwn.net → Hacker News · 105 comments

Headline, summary, brief and diagram are written by a model from the source's own text; the link, byline and numbers come from the source. Read the original before relying on a claim.