Linux Kernel 5.4 And 4.19 Will Be Supported For 6 Years

Good news as the Linux Kernel 5.4 LTS will be supported for 6 years. Not only 5.4, Kernel 4.19 LTS will also receive support for 6 years.

Greg Kroah-Hartman, a lead Linux Kernel developer officially extended end-of-life (EOL) support for the kernel 5.4 and 4.19 to six years from two years.

Linux Kernel 5.4 And 4.19 Will Be Supported For 6 Years

Kernel 5.4 will receive support until Dec 2023 and 4.19 until December 2024. Kernel 4.19 LTS was released on 2018-10-22 and Linux Kernel 5.4 LTS was released on November 24th, 2019.

Basic of Kernel:

There are two types of the kernel and they are stable and long term. The stable version comes out every 8-10 weeks and the LTS kernel arrives every two years.

The latest version is 5.7 and it has been released a few days ago.

Some of the interesting features and improvements in Kernel 5.7:

1. Inclusion of a new exFAT driver from Samsung.
2. Linux 5.7 supports Intel Tiger Lake graphics (Enabled by default).
3. Support for EFI “mixed mode” booting.
4. Support for Apple USB Fast Charge capabilities.
5. Extended ARM devices’ support.
6. Zstd compression support for the F2FS file-system.
7. OverlayFS support with VirtIO-FS.

If you are Ubuntu users and wants to upgrade the Kernel, then follow the below instruction:

We will use Linux Kernel Utilities to upgrade Linux kernel

• compile_linux_kernel.sh
• update_ubuntu_kernel.sh
• remove_old_kernels.sh

Compile_linux_kernel.sh:-  To compile and install the latest Linux Kernel from the source.

update_ubuntu_kernel.sh:- To downloads and install/update the already compiled Ubuntu Kernel.

remove_old_kernel.sh:- To removes all inactive and unused Kernels from the system.

Run the following commands to install Linux Kernel utilities in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS:

git clone https://github.com/mtompkins/linux-kernel-utilities.git

cd linux-kernel-utilities/

chmod 750 *.sh

git pull

Now, Run the following command to list the available Kernel.

./compile_linux_kernel.sh

Run the following command to compile and install the latest available Kernel:

./compile_linux_kernel.sh --latest

Run the following command to install precompiled Kernel:

./update_ubuntu_kernel.sh

To compile a kernel from a local archive file

./compile_linux_kernel.sh --archive=linux-4.5.2.tar.xz

It will list out the all available pre-compiled Linux Kernels from Kernel.ubuntu.com. You can see the number and you need to enter the desired number to install the selected Kernel.

Now restart your Ubuntu system.

Meanwhile, To download and install the latest a precompiled Ubuntu kernel from kernel.ubuntu.com, Run the following command:

./update_ubuntu_kernel.sh --latest

Now, Run the following command to remove old kernels.

./remove_old_kernels.sh