Linus Torvalds announced today the general availability of Linux kernel 5.9 RC1 as the first milestone in the two-month long development cycle, which is available for download right now from the kernel.org website for testers and early adopters. And it finally looks like things are back to normal and Linux kernel 5.9 will be a normal release, definitely not as big as Linux kernel 5.8 was. Things have calmed down during the two-week merge window, but that’s probably because of the summer vacations.