A few moments ago, December 14, the father of the Linux kernel, Mr. Linus Torvalds, was proud to announce the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the fifth RC (Release Candidate) build of the upcoming Linux 4.4 LTS kernel.

According to Mr. Torvalds, Linux kernel 4.4 LTS Release Candidate 5 is yet another normal release that consists of assorted bugfixes and core improvements. Nothing stands out in RC5 with the exception of a fairly bad core bug introduced in the previous Release Candidate build, which now has been fixed. Other than that, there are only the usual updates to drivers, networking, architectures, and filesystems.

"Things have been reasonable quiet, and rc5 looks pretty normal. There was a fairly bad core bug that was introduced in rc4 that is now fixed in rc5, but while that is a bit embarrassing, I don't think that many people actually ever hit the problem," said Linus Torvalds. "Other than that small hiccup, things are very normal, and there really are not very many commits, and they are all pretty small to boot."

Here's how to test Linux kernel 4.4 LTS RC5

If you like spending your Sunday nights testing the latest Release Candidate for the next major Linux kernel release, you should know that you can download the Linux kernel 4.4 LTS RC4 sources right now from the kernel.org website or via our website, whichever suits you best, fire up the terminal and start compiling it by hand.

However, we feel obliged to inform the adventurous ones that this is a pre-release version of Linux kernel 4.4 LTS, which means that you should not install it in your production GNU/Linux operating system. Linux kernel 4.4 will be the next LTS (Long Term Support) release and it looks like it will arrive early in 2016.