The next version of the kernel will arrive in two weeks

Jan 28, 2015 12:52 GMT  ·  By

A fresh version of the Linux kernel, 3.18.4, has been released by Greg Kroah-Hartman and is now available for download. This is now the most advanced version you can find and it will remain like this at least for the next couple of weeks.

Each Linux kernel that gets released usually receives a number of updates. This number varies from one version to another and it all has to do with the LTS status. If a kernel branch is declared LTS, then the developers will continue to issue updates for a long time, months, even years; but if it's not an LTS branch, then it's pretty short lived.

It's difficult to tell what branch will be made LTS, but if you take a look at the list of kernels available right now, you will probably notice that only the ones with even version numbers have been chosen. It's true that 3.18.x is a worthy candidate to become an LTS, but that hasn't been decided just yet and it's impossible to know ahead of time.

Linux kernel 3.18.x is a popular branch

Since it was released a couple of months ago, many developers chose this particular version of the kernel to implement into their distro and it's already available for upgrade on systems like Arch Linux or Manjaro. All of those users will surely be happy to know that a new update is coming their way.

"I'm announcing the release of the 3.18.4 kernel. All users of the 3.18 kernel series must upgrade. The updated 3.18.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.18.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=summary thanks," Greg Kroah-Hartman says in the email announcement.

More details about this release can be found in the official announcement. You can download the source package for Linux kernel 3.18.4 right now from Softpedia. You can compile it on your own, but you need to know what you're doing. It's probably best to wait until it hits the official repositories of whatever distro you're using.