Linux 4.18-rc8 Kernel Released, Final Pushed Back To Next Weekend

Last Sunday Linus Torvalds released 4.18-rc7 and expected that to be the last release candidate followed by the stable debut one week later, which would have been today. But by Tuesday this past week he had already decided he would need to delay the release over recent notable regressions and an uptick in merge activity. As a result, out today is Linux 4.18-rc8.

This is the eighth and now final release candidate for Linux 4.18. Linux 4.18-rc8 takes care of a boot-stopping IA64 VMA issue, some urgent power management fixes, and a lot of other fixes that trickled in over the past week. Rather than risk shipping Linux 4.18.0 with all the last minute changes, Torvalds diverted to safety in issuing 4.18-rc8 to allow for an extra week of testing.

Linux 4.18 will now be out by 12 August followed by the opening of the two week long Linux 4.19 merge window.

See our Linux 4.18 feature overview to learn about all of the changes in this upcoming kernel update.