Now that the Linux 6.18 merge window is over with Linux 6.18-rc1 having released yesterday, here is a look at all the interesting new features and changes to find with this kernel. Making Linux 6.18 all the more exciting is that it’s expected to become the 2025 Linux LTS kernel once its stable release occurs in December.
With Linux 6.18 there are a number of new drivers as well as a number of other interesting changes from new hardware support to enhancing existing Linux kernel capabilities. Among the many Linux 6.18 highlights are introducing KVM x86 CET virtualization, Intel USBIO drivers upstreamed, initial haptic touchpad support, AMD Secure AVIC and other AMD virtualization improvements, Intel Wildcat Lake display support, the Tyr and Rocket drivers being added to the DRM/accelerator area, XFS now enabling online fsck support by default, Intel returning to working on the Habana Labs AI driver, more AMD Versal drivers upstreamed, DM-PCACHE upstreamed as a new persistent cache target in Device Mapper, and upstreaming of Sheaves.
Processors:
– A Retpoline optimization to help with Intel E cores.
– Intel TDX will now work with Kexec except for early Xeon CPUs bearing Trust Domain Extensions with a known bug.
– Loongson security engine support for handling offloaded RNG, TPM2, and various crypto acceleration on LoongArch processors.
– Working around a PCIe performance issue on Intel Xeon 6.
– The AMD Versal TRNG driver was upstreamed for those Adaptive SoCs.
– More AMD preparations for future Zen 6 processors.
– A patch for old AMD Bulldozer CPUs.
– A late incompatible change for Intel FRED (Flexible Return Event Delivery).
– IOMMU changes across Intel, AMD, Apple, and RISC-V hardware.
– Apple M2 Pro, Max, and Ultra Device Trees upstreamed from the Asahi Linux project in continuing to work toward better Apple Silicon support on Linux.
– The ESWIN EIC7700 SoC is also now upstream as part of enabling mainline Linux kernel support for the SiFive HiFive Premier P550.
– Device Tree preparations for Arm C1 Nano, Pro, Premium, and Ultra CPUs as part of Arm’s new Lumex CSS platform.
– Sheaves were merged as a new opt-in, per-CPU and array-based caching layer.
– A minor x86 memory management optimization.
– Attack Vector Controls can now manage the new VMSCAPE mitigation.
– EDAC driver additions for Intel, AMD, and Arm.
– RISC-V now supports the MIPS Vendor Extensions.
– Updated baselines for treating Intel CPU microcode as outdated.
– Intel Panther Lake power slider support.
– Cryptography performance improvements.
Virtualization:
– More reliable handling of 255+ vCPUs on AMD EPYC servers.
– FreeBSD Bhyve hypervisor detection.
– KVM x86 CET virtualization support for both AMD and Intel processors with Control-flow Enforcement Technology.
– AMD Secure AVIC now enabled.
– Microsoft Hyper-V enhancements with support for Kexec and Kdump support for Azure Confidential VMs and more.
– Various other KVM virtualization improvements.
– NVIDIA GB300 support in the NVGRACE VFIO driver.
Linux Graphics Drivers / DRM:
– The new Rocket accelerator driver for the NPU found on newer Rockchip SoCs.
– better AMD GCN 1.0 support in the AMDGPU driver.
– Intel SLPC power_profile support.
– Intel Wildcat Lake display enabling.
– Intel is back to working on the Habana Labs accelerator driver.
– Nouveau now defaults to using the NVIDIA GSP firmware.
– Panthor DRM driver support for the Arm Mali G710, G510, G310, Gx15, Gx20, Gx25 GPUs.
– Tyr as a new Rust DRM driver for Arm Mali GPUs and eventually aims to be a replacement to the Panthor driver.
– Various other DRM driver improvements.
