Linux kernel 5.18 ends its life cycle, and officials urge users to upgrade to Linux Kernel 5.19

CTOnews.com August 26, it's time to say goodbye to the Linux 5.18 kernel series because the kernel.org website has marked it as EOL (End-of-Life).

The Linux kernel 5.18, released at the end of May 2022, is another short-lived kernel series. It introduces new features, such as support for tracking "user events" in the system, support for AMD's "host system management port" function, support for 64-bit integrity checksum on NVMe devices, support for Intel's "hardware feedback interface" function, and indirect branch tracking support for x86 architecture.

CTOnews.com learned that kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman recently released Linux kernel 5.18.19, which seems to be a very small patch with only six changes. Most importantly, Linux kernel 5.18.19, the last maintenance release of the Linux 5.17 kernel series, is now out of life and will no longer receive security and bug fixes.

Officials urge users to upgrade to the Linux 5.19 kernel series. GNU / Linux distribution maintainers and users who prefer to compile their own kernels can now get the latest Linux 5.19 kernel from the kernel.org website, but keep in mind that this is also a short branch that may support until late October 2022.

Several popular rolling distributions already run Linux kernel 5.19, including Arch Linux and openSUSE Tumbleweed, while Ubuntu users can easily install Linux kernel 5.19 from Ubuntu Kernel Mainline PPA. If users don't want to upgrade the kernel every few months, they can stick with long-term support (LTS) branches, such as Linux 5.15 LTS.