The source code for Linux 6.2 is already available for download from the  kernel.org. Commit  of the Linux kernel 6.2 release on GitHub and in Linus Torvalds' Makefile.

According to  OpenNET, Linux 6.2 has accepted 16 843 fixes from 2 178 developers. The patch is 62 MB in size. Changes affected 14 108 files, adding 730 195 lines of code and removing 409 485 lines of code. About 42% of all changes introduced in the Linux 6.2 kernel are related to device drivers, approximately 16% of changes are related to updates to code specific to hardware architectures, 12% are related to the network stack, 4% of changes are related to file systems, and 3% to the kernel's internal subsystems.

The new version of the Linux kernel contains a large number of  changes, updates and  improvements, including:

  • allowing code under the Copyleft-Next license;
  • an improved implementation of RAID5/6 in Btrfs;
  • a new method of protection against the Retbleed vulnerability in Intel and AMD CPUs;
  • continued integration of support for the Rust language;
  • improvements to the exFAT driver — file and directory creation operations are significantly faster;
  • removal of the packet driver for CD/DVD, which was declared obsolete in 2016;
  • rewritten code for handling MSI (Message-Signaled Interrupts);
  • the addition of an option to regulate memory consumption during deferred writes;
  • the addition of the PLB (Protective Load Balancing) balancing mechanism for TCP;
  • the addition of the FineIBT hybrid control-flow protection mechanism;
  • the addition of PLB (Protective Load Balancing) support for IPv6;
  • the addition of support for 800-gigabit links;
  • the ability to define custom objects and data structures in BPF;
  • the addition of the rv utility (Runtime Verification), intended to verify correct operation on highly reliable systems that guarantee the absence of failures;
  • reduced power consumption in the RCU locking implementation;
  • support for Intel Arc discrete graphics cards (DG2/Alchemist) and improved support for Meteor Lake GPUs;
  • support for Sony smartphones and tablets (Xperia 10 IV, 5 IV, X and X compact, OnePlus One, 3, 3T and Nord N100, Xiaomi Poco F1 and Mi6, Huawei Watch, Google Pixel 3a, Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 10.1;
  • support for ARM SoCs and Apple boards T6000 (M1 Pro), T6001 (M1 Max), T6002 (M1 Ultra), Qualcomm MSM8996 Pro (Snapdragon 821), SM6115 (Snapdragon 662), SM4250 (Snapdragon 460), SM6375 (Snapdragon 695), SDM670 (Snapdragon 670), MSM8976 (Snapdragon 652), MSM8956 (Snapdragon 650), RK3326 Odroid-Go/rg351, Zyxel NSA310S, InnoComm i.MX8MM, Odroid Go Ultra.


In Linux 6.2, the migration of additional functionality from the  Rust-for-Linux  branch began, related to using the Rust language as a second language for developing drivers and kernel modules. Rust support is inactive by default and does not make Rust a mandatory kernel build dependency. The basic Rust functionality proposed in Linux 6.1 has been  extended with capabilities for supporting low-level code, such as the Vec type and the pr_debug!(), pr_cont!() and pr_alert!() macros, as well as the procedural macro "#[vtable]", which simplifies working with function pointer tables. The addition of high-level Rust wrappers for kernel subsystems, which will allow full-fledged drivers to be written in Rust, is expected in future Linux kernel releases.