Linux Kernel 6.9 EOL: Mandatory Upgrade to Kernel 6.10 for Continued Support

This is your friendly reminder that the Linux 6.9 kernel series has reached the end of its supported life and that you should consider upgrading to Linux kernel 6.10 as soon as possible.

“This branch is now end-of-life and everyone should move to the 6.10.y branch now – Greg Kroah-Hartman.”

Linux kernel 6.9 was released on May 12th, 2024, introducing new features like Rust support on AArch64 (ARM64) architectures, support for the Intel FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) mechanism for improved low-level event delivery, support for AMD SNP (Secure Nested Paging) guests, and more.

Since Linux kernel 6.9 is not an LTS (Long Term Support) branch, it was only supported for a couple of months and is now marked as EOL (End of Life) on the kernel.org website. Renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has urged users to move to the latest Linux 6.10 kernel branch.

The last update to the Linux 6.9 kernel series is Linux 6.9.12, which landed this week in the stable repositories of Fedora Linux 40. Popular rolling-release distributions like Arch Linux or openSUSE Tumbleweed already upgraded to the latest Linux 6.10 kernel series.

Linux kernel 6.10 was released on July 14th, 2024, with new features like a mseal() system call for memory sealing to protect the mapping itself against modifications and mitigate memory corruption issues, shadow stack support for the x32 subarchitecture, TPM bus encryption and integrity protection.

More and more GNU/Linux distributions plan to upgrade to the Linux 6.10 kernel in the coming weeks, including Fedora Linux, Ubuntu, and Linux Lite. following this tutorial. If you’re using other GNU/Linux distributions, check with their maintainers to see if Linux 6.10 will be available to upgrade.

Linux 6.10 is yet another short-lived kernel branch that will be supported for a couple of months. Therefore, if you’re looking for long-term support, you should consider moving to one of the many LTS kernel series, including Linux 6.6 LTS and Linux 6.1 LTS, both branches being supported until December 2026.

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