Linux kernel 4.20 reached End-of-Life, Linux kernel 5.0 is recommended

by ddos · March 28, 2019

Greg Kroah-Hartman, a well-known Linux kernel developer and maintainer, announced today that the Linux Kernel 4.20 kernel branch has ended and urges users to upgrade to the updated kernel 5.0 as soon as possible. Linux Kernel 4.20 was released on December 23, 2018, introducing a number of enhancements that fix Indirect Branch Prediction Barrier (IBPB) and Single Thread Indirect Branch Predictors (STIBP) issues, migrating the impact of Spectre exploits.

Linux Kernel 4.18

The Linux Kernel 4.20 update provides better Spectre Variant 2 userspace-userspace protection, enhanced Spectre Variant 4 mitigation for ARM64 (AArch64) processors, support for AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20 graphics, support for C-SKY CPU architecture, and Support for Hygon Dhyana x86 CPU, AMD Radeon Picasso, and Raven 2 GPUs.

With the release of the Linux Kernel 4.20.17 maintenance release, the Linux 4.20 kernel has reached the end of its life and there are no subsequent maintenance releases in the future. Greg strongly recommends that users upgrade to the latest Linux 5.0 kernel branch.

Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote,

I’m announcing the release of the 4.20.17 kernel.

Note, this is the LAST release of the 4.20.y kernel. It is now
end-of-life, please move to the 5.0.y kernel tree at this point in time.

All users of the 4.20 kernel series must upgrade.