Now, he's released Linux 7.0, successor to Linux 6.19, for the same reason. If someone tells you that 7.0 is a "major" release, they're wrong. It's a good release with some significant changes, but it's not a "big" one.

That said, Rust has finally become a stable part of Linux with this release after more than five years of debate and incremental work. At the invitation-only Linux Kernel Maintainers Summit in Tokyo in December 2025, Linux kernel developer Jonathan Corbet wrote, "The consensus among the assembled developers is that Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental -- it is now a core part of the kernel and is here to stay. So the 'experimental' tag will be coming off."

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Specifically, in 7.0, the kernel's build tooling now recognizes Rust modules natively, with full cross-compilation support for x86_64, ARM, and RISC-V chips.