Linus Torvalds opened the Linux 7.3 merge window on August 30th with the release of 7.3-rc1 — and it's already one of the largest opening RCs in recent memory, clocking in at just under 41 million lines of code. A significant chunk of that is courtesy of a massive AMD GPU register file dump, but the real story is the breadth of improvements landing across the entire stack.
AMD Gets Big Wins
AMD dominates the diff stats for 7.3-rc1. The AMD kernel graphics driver ballooned to roughly 6.5 million lines, largely due to new DCN 6.0 display engine register headers and other upcoming GPU IP blocks that AMD needs in-tree ahead of its next hardware generation. Phoronix's breakdown confirms that AMD's changes account for around a third of all rc1 delta — which is extraordinary even by the standards of AMD's historically large graphics submissions. Additional Zen 6-era platform enabling is also in the mix for users who want early support for upcoming hardware.
The Steam Controller Finally Gets a Native Driver
Buried in the gaming section is a long-overdue win: Linux 7.3 includes a native HID driver for the original Valve Steam Controller. Up until now, using the Steam Controller on Linux without the Steam client required either SDL2 or third-party workarounds. The new in-kernel driver changes that — the controller will work as a standard HID input device, regardless of whether Steam is running. A small but meaningful quality-of-life win for Linux gamers.
Apple Silicon Gets Thunderbolt and Better Power Management
Apple hardware support in Linux continues its steady progress. 7.3-rc1 introduces initial USB4 and Thunderbolt support for Apple M1 through M3 chips, alongside a new Apple PMGR (Power Manager) driver that handles power-gating of on-chip hardware blocks. This opens the door for more peripherals to work reliably on Apple silicon machines running Linux, and lays groundwork for future Thunderbolt device compatibility.
KVM, Scheduler, and Other Highlights
A major overhaul of KVM guest memory conversion is part of rc1, improving how the kernel manages memory transitions for virtual machines. On the scheduler side, improvements targeting gaming workloads, hybrid CPU topologies, and lower scheduler latency have been landing throughout the 7.3 cycle.
- Intel Xe3P (Nova Lake) graphics — enabled out-of-the-box
- FailFS upstreamed — a minimal filesystem that always returns errors, useful for testing error-handling paths
- Low-latency mode for USB4STREAM — benefits real-time audio and data over USB4
- Nouveau + NVK Vulkan Video — open-source NVIDIA driver gains Vulkan Video decode support
- Initial Intel Starfire support begins landing
The final release of Linux 7.3 is expected in the second half of October 2026. If you want to test now, rc1 is available from kernel.org.