Linux Kernel 4.15: The release of the Linux 4.15 kernel series was recently announced, which is the first fully patched version for the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities.
Linux kernel 4.15 has been in development for the past eight weeks, during which time kernel developers have been extremely busy redesigning the kernel in response to two critical hardware flaws, Meltdown and Spectre, that were made public earlier this month and put billions of devices at risk.
Linux kernel 4.15 is the first kernel series to be fully patched for the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities, but only for the x86 and PowerPC (PPC) architectures. If you are using a GNU/Linux distribution with an Intel or AMD processor, it is very likely that they are vulnerable to Meltdown and Spectre.
Of course, the other supported Linux kernel series also received fixes for Meltdown and Spectre, leaving users confused about which one to install first. However, with the new Linux 4.15 kernel, which will soon be officially available, you will no longer be in a dilemma.
In addition to the Meltdown and Spectre patches, the Linux 4.15 kernel comes with some interesting features, including support for the RISC-V architecture, support for AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization technology, and support for the User-Mode Instruction Prevention feature on Intel CPUs.
There's also good news for AMD users, as Linux kernel 4.15 significantly improves video support and adds modes to the AMDGPU open-source graphics driver for supported AMD Radeon GPUs. In addition, machines with SATA Link Power Management feature have better power consumption.
Those of you who wish to install the Linux 4.15 kernel on your Linux operating system can download it from kernel.org, otherwise you will have to wait until the upgrade is done automatically.
