Linux Kernel 2.6.18 has been finally released today, after many builds of the 2.6.17 version. It is named "Jolly Roger" and Linus Torvalds says: "She's good to go, hoist anchor!

Here's some real booty for all you land-lubbers.

There's not too many changes, with t'bulk of the patch bein' defconfig updates, but the shortlog at the aft of this here email describes the details if you care, you scurvy dogs.

Header cleanups, various one-liners, and random other fixes."

The Linux Kernel is the essential part of all Linux Distributions, responsible for resource allocation, low-level hardware interfaces, security, simple communications, and basic file system management.

Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, initially written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance.

This version of the kernel also contains a number of fixes and updates, all of which can be found in the official change-log.

You can download the new Linux kernel 2.6.18 right now from Softpedia.