Linus Torvalds’s November 8, 2026, Linux 7.4-rc2 update relayed Alexei Starovoitov’s assessment that fixes on the BPF side were arriving faster than new bug reports. Torvalds called it a possible sign of change and said most other areas of the kernel had not reached that point. The observation concerned BPF, not a peak across Linux as a whole. Torvalds’s update
A faster pace of fixes in one kernel area is a signal about that area, not a measure of the whole Linux project.
What Torvalds said about AI fixes
Torvalds also said that much of the Linux 7.4-rc2 work was driven by various AI fixes. He gave no count or share, so the statement describes the work qualitatively rather than measuring its volume.
Why the diffstat does not count AI fixes
Torvalds said automated Coccinelle updates, mostly one- or two-line changes spread across many files, dominated the diffstat’s appearance. He discussed those scripted edits separately from the AI fixes. The diffstat therefore describes how the Coccinelle changes were distributed; it does not give a count of AI fixes.
