With the Linux 6.18 stable kernel release expected to take place tomorrow on 30 November, here is a reminder about some of the new hardware support and other interesting features coming in this next stable version of the Linux kernel.
In our original reporting and monitoring of the Linux 6.18 kernel changes, some of the most interesting highlights for Linux 6.18 on the Phoronix radar include:
– Apple M2 Pro, Max, and Ultra support in early form for the mainline kernel… The Device Trees are upstreamed but there is still more work toward bettering the Apple M2 class device support in the mainline Linux kernel. For now any Apple Silicon users are still best off using the latest downstream Asahi Linux code.
– Initial ESWIN EIC7700 SoC support in the mainline kernel for that SoC most notably used by the SiFive HiFive Premier P550 developer board.
– Early preparations toward AMD Zen 6 platforms.
– Merging of “Sheaves” as a new op-tin, per-CPU and array-based caching layer within the kernel.
– Intel Wildcat Lake display support is upstreamed for that cut-down hardware using Xe3 graphics.
– Nouveau now defaults to using the NVIDIA GPU System Processor (GSP) firmware on Turing and Ampere GPUs where there are both code paths in place.
– Btrfs now supports block sizes greater than page size, better parallelism for read-heavy workloads, and other improvements.
– XFS enables online fsck support by default.
– DM-PCACHE is upstreamed as a high throughput, low-latency direct access read/write cache built around Device Mapper.
– Google PSP Security Protocol (PSP) encryption support for TCP connections.
– Initial haptic touchpad support was upstreamed by Google.
– A lot of new Rust code within the kernel including the Rust Binder driver for Android devices in the future, USB driver Rust bindings, and other enhancements.
A more exhaustive overview of the Linux 6.18 changes can be found via our Linux 6.18 feature overview. Barring any last minute hesitations by Linus Torvalds, Linux 6.18 stable is expected for release in a little more than 24 hours from now… And then after that, onto the Linux v6.19 merge window.
Linux 6.18 is also anticipated to become this year’s Long Term Support (LTS) kernel version in being the last major kernel release of 2025.
