Linux 6.18: LTS kernel with many bug fixes shortly before release

Linux kernel 6.18 has been available since the beginning of the week. Linus Torvalds officially released it with numerous minor corrections at the end of development. As is customary for the last kernel release of a year, Linux 6.18 also receives the designation of a long-term support kernel – it is to be supplied with corrections until December 2027.

On the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Torvalds explains that he would have been happier if there had been less noise from bug fixes in the last week before the release. "While there are a few more bug fixes than I had hoped for, there was nothing that would make me believe it needed more time to cook," Torvalds elaborates there, "so 6.18 was marked and pushed out."

The mail is accompanied by a longer "shortlist" of last-minute corrections. "Most of the last-minute fixes are minor corrections in drivers, plus some random noise elsewhere (Bluetooth, Ceph, afs)," reassures the Linux inventor. "Nothing particularly stands out to me, but hey, here's a short list with details if you want to see them."

No special features for Torvalds

Torvalds sees no other noteworthy innovations in Kernel 6.18. However, on the release page of kernel.org, Linux 6.18 has now received the status of "Longterm Release Kernel", with a projected end-of-life in December 2027. The official changelog on kernel.org is, however, very extensive.

The innovations include, among other things, better support for certain power-saving modes of Intel CPUs and improved efficiency for AMD GPUs. Bcachefs in the kernel is history, but it can still be used as a DKMS module. The exFAT file system, on the other hand, is expected to be significantly faster in operations with small files due to optimizations. Memory management also brings improvements that are intended to lead to higher performance. The mechanism for allocating small memory areas called "Slub" receives a per-CPU cache, which makes it work locally and thus faster. In the networking area, Google's PSP encryption is introduced, initially for TCP connections.

The kernel contains numerous other changes. A more in-depth article with the various innovations and changes in Linux 6.18 will follow shortly.

For the upcoming kernel 6.19, Linus Torvalds already announces that he wants to take an extra week and is already planning for a Release Candidate 8 (rc8) in development. This is due to the holiday season over the holidays – the release will be in February anyway, by then people will be over their food comas.

The updated kernel sources are available for download on kernel.org as usual. The Kernel 6.17 was released most recently, towards the end of September of this year. It brought a freeze for bcachefs, which then actually flew out of the developer kernel just a few days later.

(dmk)