Linux Kernel: RC3 Stability Push - EFI Memory Fixes and I2C Lock Reverts
Linux 7.0-rc3 drops with critical stability fixes, featuring Linus pulling in an important EFI memory management fix from Ard Biesheuvel and a strategic revert in the i2c i801 driver. The focus is clearly on getting the fundamentals rock solid as we march toward the 7.0 release.
Duration: PT3M47S
Episode overview
This episode is a short developer briefing from Linux Kernel.
It explains recent repository work in plain language.
- Show: Linux Kernel
- Published: 2026-03-09T15:42:14Z
- Audio duration: PT3M47S
Transcript excerpt
This excerpt keeps the crawler page concise. Listen to the episode or use the RSS feed for the full update.
Hey there, kernel hackers! Welcome back to another episode of Linux Kernel. I'm your host, and wow, March 9th 2026 is shaping up to be one of those classic "let's get this right" kind of days in kernel land. You know those days when the focus shifts from shiny new features to making sure everything just works…
So Linus has been busy with three commits, and they tell a really interesting story about where we are in the 7.0 development cycle. We're at rc3 now, which means we're in that sweet spot where it's all about polish, stability, and fixing those sneaky edge cases that could bite us later.
Let me start with the big story today - we've got a really important EFI fix coming in from Ard Biesheuvel. Now, EFI might sound like one of those deep, scary kernel subsystems, but this fix is actually a great example of the kind of subtle timing issues that make kernel development so fascinating.
Here's what was happening: on x86 systems, there's this workaround where the kernel keeps EFI boot services memory regions reserved until after something called SetVirtualAddressMap completes. Sounds reasonable, right? But here's the catch - deferred struct page initialization could kick in and…
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