Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1099798/

The 7.3-rc7 kernel prepatch is out for
testing. According to Linus: “As always, I would have preferred to see a smaller
rc, but it’s not like anything in here looks like a reason to delay
the final release. So that’s still set for next weekend unless
something new comes up.”

One notable change that slipped into the mainline this week is the deprecation
of the ext4 data=journal mode; it will be removed entirely at the
beginning of 2028.