Linux 4.15 kernel users are encouraged to adopt a newer version. This branch has now become an EOL contraction of End Of Life.
The Linux 4.15 kernel is at the end of its life, the EOL status is announced
This irreversible status does not bode well. It implies that there will be no more maintenance. After a very busy cycle due to Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, the correction of two hardware bugs called critical last January or 18 updates, the EOL status is announced. Its support is abandoned.
For security reasons, this situation requires a fairly rapid glimpse of the adoption of the 4.16 kernel. This concerns for example users of GNU/Linux distributions. They are prompted to assign an upgrade.
The announcement was made by Greg Kroah-Hartman on the occasion of the Linux 4.15.18 kernel release. He explained
“All 4.15 Series users must upgrade. This is the latest version of kernel 4.15. It is now at the end of its life. Please go to branch 4.16.”
Concerning the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, this version of the kernel has benefited from 64-bit and 32-bit hardware architecture attenuations.
Linux 4.16 is fully fixed and offers support for 64-bit ARM (AArch64) and IBM System z (s390) hardware. It also benefits from numerous driver and driver updates while having richer hardware compatibility.