Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 7.0-rc1 today, marking the conclusion of the kernel's merge window for the upcoming stable release. This version bump to 7.0 follows Torvalds' practice of incrementing the major version number after reaching x.19, as seen previously with 6.0 and 5.0. Despite the numbering coincidence, the 7.0 merge window has delivered a substantial set of updates. Phoronix reports that Linux 7.0 is "quite heavy on new features," indicating significant changes and additions across various subsystems that will be included in the final 7.0 kernel. Developers and users can now begin testing the release candidate.