Linus Torvalds has announced the release of Linux kernel 6.18, featuring new drivers, file system improvements, and hardware support enhancements. The kernel includes significant updates like the removal of Bcachefs and support for Rust Binder. It may become the next long-term support series.
Linux kernel 6.18 became available for download on November 30, 2025, as announced by Linus Torvalds. This release introduces numerous enhancements, including the removal of the Bcachefs file system and support for the Rust Binder driver. A new dm-pcache device-mapper target enables persistent memory as a cache for slower block devices, while a microcode= command-line option controls the microcode loader on x86 platforms.
Key file system and networking improvements include extending file handle support to kernel namespaces, initial block size greater than page size for Btrfs, and Accurate Explicit Congestion Notification (AccECN) for the TCP stack. OverlayFS now supports case-folding, and EXT4 adds support for 32-bit reserved user and group IDs along with a new ioctl interface for superblock parameters.
Hardware support expands with drivers for AMD VersalNET memory controller and Cortex A72 cores for error reporting, a virtio SPI driver for virtual machines, DualSense PlayStation controller audio jacks, and haptic touchpads in HID drivers. It also enables support for Apple M2 Pro, M2 Max, and M2 Ultra SoCs, two Alder Lake-S SOCs, and guest support for AMD’s Secure AVIC feature.
Virtualization and security features include KVM support for control-flow enforcement technology (CET) on Intel and AMD, SEV-SNP CipherText Hiding on x86, and audit subsystem handling multiple Linux security modules. BPF programs can now be signed, and HMAC-encrypted-transaction support on TPM (TPM2_TCG_HMAC) is disabled by default.
Performance boosts cover swap, NFS server scaling, UDP receive, and kernel memory allocation via the new “sheaves” feature. Additional additions are PSP encryption for TCP connections, mixed completion queue event sizes, BPF arenas for PowerPC, and sparse interrupts for User-mode-Linux.
Users can download the kernel from kernel.org or Torvalds’ git tree, though waiting for distribution updates is recommended. The merge window for Linux 6.19 opens now, with its first release candidate on December 14, 2025, and full release expected in early February 2026. As the last release of 2025, it could be designated as the next LTS kernel by Greg Kroah-Hartman.