The Linux kernel 6.17 series has officially reached the end of its supported life, prompting users to upgrade to the newer 6.18 LTS version. Released in September 2025, kernel 6.17 was a short-term branch that introduced several hardware support enhancements. Kernel 6.18, launched last month, offers long-term stability until 2027.
On December 18, 2025, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman declared the 6.17 series end of life, marking it on kernel.org alongside the release of its final update, version 6.17.13. This short-lived kernel, which debuted on September 28, 2025, provided features such as ARM's Branch Record Buffer Extension (BRBE) support, AMD's hardware feedback interface (HFI), compatibility with Intel's Wildcat Lake and Bartlett Lake-S processors, and preliminary decoding for HEVC (H.265) and VP9 codecs in Qualcomm's Iris hardware.
Users are now encouraged to transition to Linux kernel 6.18, released on November 30, 2025. This long-term support (LTS) branch includes innovations like the Rust Binder driver for inter-process communication, a dm-pcache device-mapper target for using persistent memory as a cache on slower block devices, and a microcode= command-line option to manage x86 microcode loading. The current stable version stands at 6.18.2, already integrated into distributions including openSUSE Tumbleweed, Arch Linux, and CachyOS.
As an LTS kernel, 6.18 will receive updates through December 2027, joining other maintained series such as 6.12 LTS, 6.6 LTS, 6.1 LTS, 5.15 LTS, and 5.10 LTS. This ensures ongoing security and stability for Linux systems relying on these versions.
