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It’s that time of the year again, when the famous Arch Linux distribution gets a new ISO release with the latest and greatest Linux kernel. Arch Linux’s September 2020 snapshot is out as the first to use Linux kernel 5.8.
If you’ve been waiting to install Arch Linux on your personal computer or server with the Linux 5.8 kernel series out of the box, the wait is finally over. The Arch Linux 2020.09.01 snapshot is out now and it’s powered by Linux kernel 5.8.5.
Dubbed as one of the biggest releases of all time, the Linux 5.8 kernel introduces mitigations for the Special Register Buffer Data Sampling (SRBDS) a.k.a. CrossTalk hardware vulnerability, a new initrdmem= boot option to allow you to specify an initial RAM disk image, as well as support for LZO-RLE compression in the F2FS file system.
It also adds Branch Target Identification (BTI) and Shadow Call Stack support for the AArch64 (ARM64) architecture, inline encryption support for the block layer, a new faccessat2() system call, a new event-notification mechanism, support for multiple private instances in the /proc file system, as well as numerous other changes.
The new ISO snapshot is here just in time for those who want to deploy Arch Linux on new computers as the Linux 5.7 kernel series used in previous ISO releases has reached end of life and it will no longer receive maintenance updates that address security issues or improve hardware support.
If Linux kernel 5.8 is not enough reason to make you download the Arch Linux 2020.09.01 snapshot for new installations, you should know that the latest ISO release is also packed with all of August’s updates and security fixes, which means that you won’t have to download hundreds of updates from the repos after the installation.
Of course, if you’re already using Arch Linux and you have a healthy install, there’s no need to download the new ISO snapshot. To keep your installations up-to-date, simply run the sudo pacman -Syu command from time to time to receive all the newest software releases and GNU/Linux technologies.
Last updated 4 years ago
