Linus Torvalds just announced the first RC of 6.9 on the Linux Kernels mailing list, saying that it "looks pretty normal", although it is record-breaking in size.
Linux Kernel 6.9 Released: What's New?
He singled out some RC-1 changes in kernel 6.9, which should be ready around mid-May, as particularly noteworthy.
One is a very old feature that appears the door: the original NTFS driver in the kernel. No, it doesn't mean that Linux won't be able to use Windows disks anymore – it's the opposite: it will be able to handle them better.
Linux has no less than three FOSS drivers for NTFS. Of these, the newest and most capable is called ntfs3, submitted by Paragon Software back in 2020, finally accepted in mid-2021 and released in kernel version 5.15.
