Linux Kernel 5.7 Reached End of Life, Upgrade to Linux Kernel 5.8 Now

Linux kernel 5.7 End of Life

It’s that time of the year again, the Linux kernel 5.7 series is now EOL (End-of-Life) and it will no longer receive updates or security fixes, so everyone should update to the latest Linux 5.8 kernel series.

Linux kernel 5.7 was announced at the end of May 2020 and it shipped with some interesting features, including a new and improved exFAT file system, ARM Kernel Pointer Authentication for the ARM64 (AArch64) architecture, as well as several new features to optimize certain x86 CPUs, such as frequency invariant scheduler accounting and split lock detection.

It also brought vDPA device support, improved perf cgroup profiling, a thermal-aware scheduler for increased performance, a new Linux Security Module for BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) programs, support for the userfaultfd(2) system call, support for user xattrs in cgroupfs, as well as various power management improvements.

But Linux kernel 5.7 is one of those short-lived kernel branches and it’s now marked as EOL (End-of-Life) on the kernel.org website, starting today with the release of the last maintenance update in the series, Linux kernel 5.7.19.

“I’m announcing the release of the 5.7.19 kernel. All users of the 5.7 kernel series must upgrade. Note, this is the LAST 5.7.y kernel to be released. This release series is now end-of-life, please move to 5.8.y at this point in time,” said Greg Kroah-Hartman in a mailing list announcement.

Therefore, if you’re using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by the Linux 5.7 series, you have two options. Either update to Linux kernel 5.7.19 now and upgrade to the latest Linux 5.8 kernel series at a later time, or upgrade directly to Linux 5.8.

The current release in the Linux 5.8 series is Linux kernel 5.8.5, also announced today. You can download either one right now from kernel.org.

Linux OS maintainers should also consider upgrading the kernel on their current releases to Linux kernel 5.8 as soon as possible if they’re using Linux 5.7.

However, if you’re using a long-term supported kernel series, such as Linux 5.4 LTS, you should stick with it because Linux 5.8 is not an LTS (Long Term Support) release.

Last updated 4 years ago

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com