Linus Torvalds released Linux 7.1-rc6 on Sunday. The candidate arrives with another sizable batch of fixes. He called it smaller than rc5 yet still larger than he’d wish for at this stage. Developers and testers now have fresh code to run through its paces. The stable Linux 7.1 release remains targeted for mid-June. But the persistent flow of changes keeps the schedule from feeling certain. Torvalds pulled in updates across drivers for GPUs, networking, USB, serial, sound and SCSI. Core networking code saw touches. So did selftests, architecture work on x86, MIPS and arm64 KVM, filesystems including SMB and NFS, memory management and live update features. The spread shows how late-stage polishing touches many corners of the kernel at once. Persistent Fixes and the Shadow of AI Assistance This marks the latest in a pattern. Earlier candidates in the 7.1 cycle also arrived heavier than historical norms. Phoronix reported that rc5 carried lots of AI and LLM-assisted fixes.…