Linus Torvalds announced the stable release of the Linux 7.1 kernel yesterday, June 14, 2026. The release arrived "a half-day early thanks to his travel plans," according to Torvalds. This version includes a rewritten NTFS driver, Intel FRED support for Panther Lake processors, and improvements to Arc Graphics performance. Other notable additions in Linux 7.1 are native audio fixes for the Steam Deck OLED, improved battery reporting for Apple Silicon devices, and the removal of substantial legacy code from the kernel.