Linux 7.3-rc1 With AMD Zen 6 Additions, Better Btrfs Performance & 2026 Steam Controller

Like clockwork, the Linux 7.3 merge window has concluded after two weeks and the Linux 7.3-rc1 kernel now available for testing. Linux 7.3-rc1 is available following a lot of new code landing for new/improved hardware support, file-system enhancements, security improvements, and a lot more. Of course, also a lot of fixes to different pieces of the Linux kernel as a result of AI/LLM-driven activity. Linux 7.3 brings new optimizations for Intel hybrid CPUs, more enablement for upcoming AMD Zen 6 platforms, better Btrfs performance, Nouveau support for NVK Vulkan Video, kernel driver support for the 2026 Valve Steam Controller, initial M3 Ultra / Pro / Max support, new AMD graphics IP enablement, initial enabling around Intel Starfire, Intel Xe3P graphics with Nova Lake are now enabled out-of-the-box, FailFS is upstreamed, a low-latency mode for USB4STREAM, and a lot of other new functionality. Linux 7.3 also includes the gaming improvements from Valve for enhancing the experience when running on systems with very limited amounts of vRAM. Plus a number of old/obsolete hardware drivers continue to be removed due to the ongoing noise by AI/LLM agents. Now onward to more Linux 7.3 kernel testing and performance benchmarking at Phoronix. My more exhaustive feature overview of the Linux 7.3 kernel features will be published in the next few days. Linus Torvalds hasn't yet posted his release comments on the LKML but they are expected soon. Linux 7.3-rc1 is available via Git.Update: Linus Torvalds is now out with his customary message for marking Linux 7.3-rc1. He commented:"Two weeks have passed, it's Sunday afternoon, and the merge window has closed. Nothing really stands out - except for the fact that it's big. It's not the biggest rc1 we've ever had, but it's certainly up there, at least in number of commits. And I don't think that surprises anybody any more. It's all the same pattern we've been seeing for a while now. It's also big as an actual diff, and the reason for *that* is not surprising either: this is yet another one of those releases with a big AMD GPU register dump. This time it's the AMD DCN6 register headers. They're huge. As usual. That's what you get when you dump all the hardware definitions as C header #defines. There's also the accompanying code for the new gen. All in all, that AMD GPU code and header dump accounts for about a third of the whole rc1 patch. But if you just mask out that big chunk, things look pretty normal, and this merge window didn't feel that different from most of them despite being large. I made it unnecessarily hard for myself by being a grade A nincompoop and doing a system upgrade in the middle, and then having to chase down an issue that caused, but that was entirely on me. I knew I shouldn't have done it, but I just naively went "nothing will go wrong". And hey, it was all good in the end, I just made this merge window harder for myself than I should have. Let's hope the rest of this release will go smoothly. And be small and uneventful. But who am I kidding? It almost certainly won't be small, but I can always hope."