Linus Torvalds has released the new Linux kernel 5.4 series, a major release that adds many new features, greater security, and updated drivers for new hardware. 
Linux kernel 5.4 is being developed since early October and had a total of eight Release Candidates. It features many new capabilities such as support for Microsoft’s exFAT file system, which was eventually integrated into the kernel.
Another important change that Linux kernel 5.4 features is the ability to lock down the kernel, which offers additional security, since it can restrict access to the kernel to certain applications.
AMD fans will be happy, as the Linux kernel 5.4 supports the AMD Radeon Navi 12 and 14, AMD Radeon Arcturus GPUs, as well as the AMD Dali APU. It also supports the AMD Ryzen 3000 series CPUs and the AMD EPYC microprocessors for improved load balancing.
It supports Intel Tiger Lake processors, Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoCs, and Intel Lightning Mountain SoC. It offers improved application memory management on Android, and includes a new high-performance virtio driver for file sharing between hosts and guests. It includes a new security feature for detecting file tampering called fs-verity as well as dm-clone for live cloning of block devices.
The source code for Linux kernel 5.4 5.4 is available for download from kernel.org if you want to compile it yourself.
However, you should not forget that at this moment the new kernel is still in a “mainline” state, which means it is still considered a release that is not ready for mass adoption. Version 5.4 will become “stable” in one or two weeks after its initial release. So it would be advisable to wait at least two weeks.
