Linux 7.3 Released: Second-Busiest Merge Window, AI-Driven Growth, and New Hardware Support

Linux 7.3 Arrives on Schedule

Linux 7.3 was released as a stable kernel on October 18, 2026, right on schedule. It is the fifth major release of the 7.x era.

The development cycle followed the kernel's familiar pattern. A two-week merge window closed on August 30, 2026. Seven release candidates followed before the final release.

A Near-Record Merge Window

This cycle was unusually busy. According to LWN's analysis, as cited by the source, the Linux 7.3 merge window took in 15,267 commits. That makes it the second-busiest merge window in the kernel's history, behind only Linux 6.7.

The first release candidate was also large, with about 560,000 lines landing in rc1. Much of that bulk was not new logic, though. A large share came from an AMD GPU register dump of DCN 6.0 display headers, the kind of machine-generated hardware description that can inflate line counts quickly.

Kernel Growth and the Role of AI

With this release, the kernel reaches about 40.98 million lines of code, up from about 40.42 million.

Linus Torvalds attributes much of this growth to AI and LLM coding agents that find bugs and help write fixes. He also credits these tools with speeding up the removal of stale drivers. In his view, AI-assisted development is contributing both new code and the cleanup of old code.

Key Features and Hardware Support

Linux 7.3 brings a range of performance improvements and hardware enablement work:

• Faster I/O on modern systems
• Faster Btrfs
• More AMD Zen 6 platform preparations ahead of future hardware
• Stable Intel Nova Lake integrated graphics support
• Steam Controller 2026 kernel driver support
• Improvements for older AMD GPUs
• Improved vRAM management for systems with limited video memory

The release covers both upcoming platforms and existing hardware, so owners of current and older machines get improvements alongside the forward-looking work.

Late Fixes Before Release

Several notable fixes were merged in the final stretch before release:

• A fix for rare SMP boot hangs, traced back to a change made in 2024
• Workarounds for Samsung 990 PRO and 990 EVO Plus SSDs running select firmware versions

The LTS Question

One question is still open. It has not been decided whether Linux 7.3 or Linux 7.4 will be this year's Long Term Support (LTS) kernel. Distributions and users who depend on long-lived kernels will be waiting for that decision.