Linux 4.18.20 is the last maintenance update in the series

Nov 27, 2018 22:18 GMT  ·  By

Renowned Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the end of life of the Linux 4.18 kernel series, urging users to upgrade their distributions to a newer kernel as soon as possible.

Released on August 12, 2018, by Linus Torvalds, the Linux 4.18 kernel series introduced Spectre Variant 1 and Spectre Variant 2 mitigations for 32-bit ARM architectures, Spectre Variant 4 mitigations for the ARM64 (AArch64) and ARMv8 architectures, and initial support for the Radeon Vega 20 GPUs.

It also brought a just-in-time compiler for eBPF programs on 32-bit (x86) architectures, better discard support for F2FS (Flash-Friendly File System), improved USB Type-C and USB 3.2 support, as well as official support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 ARM mobile processor.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.18.20 kernel. All users of the 4.18 kernel series must upgrade," said Greg Kroah-Hartman in a mailing list announcement. "Note, this is the LAST 4.18.y kernel release. 4.18 is now end-of-life, please move to 4.19.y at this point in time."

Upgrade to Linux kernel 4.19

Because Linux kernel 4.18 isn't a long-term supported (LTS) series, it reached end of life with the Linux 4.18.20 update released last week by Greg Kroah-Hartman, on November 21, 2018. Therefore, all users using the Linux 4.18 kernel series are now urged to upgrade to the latest branch, namely Linux kernel 4.19.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.18.20 kernel. All users of the 4.18 kernel series must upgrade," said Greg Kroah-Hartman in a mailing list announcement. "Note, this is the LAST 4.18.y kernel release. 4.18 is now end-of-life, please move to 4.19.y at this point in time."

If your GNU/Linux distribution is powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.18 series, we recommend upgrading to the Linux 4.19 series as soon as possible. The latest release is Linux kernel 4.19.5, released on November 27, 2018, which you can download right now from kernel.org or through our Linux software portal.