| On the kernel.org website, the Linux 6.3 kernel series has been marked as EOL (End of Life), which means that it will no longer support bugs and security fixes, and the time to bid farewell to the Linux 6.3 kernel series has arrived. |
Earlier, well-known Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of Linux kernel 6.3.13, the 13th maintenance update of the Linux 6.3 kernel series, which brought quite a few changes (481 files were modified, 4919 files were inserted and 2870 files were deleted).
However, Greg Kroah-Hartman also marked the Linux kernel 6.3 series as EOL (end of life) on the kernel.org website, pointing out that Linux kernel 6.3.13 is the last update of the series, and urging users to upgrade their Linux systems to The latest Linux 6.4 kernel.
"I hereby announce the release of the 6.3.13 kernel. All users of the 6.3 kernel series must upgrade," Greg Kroah-Hartman said in a mailing list announcement. "Please note that this was the last release of the 6.3.y kernel. It is now obsolete, please move to the 6.4.y kernel branch at this time".
Linux kernel 6.3 was released two and a half months ago, on April 23, 2023, which introduced some new features, such as a new DRM acceleration driver for Intel VPU, Rust code support for x86_64 user-mode Linux, and NFS file system AES-SHA2-based encryption, and support for AMD's "Automatic IBRS" feature.
On the other hand, Linux kernel 6.4 introduces more new features, such as Intel LAM support, user tracking events, partition block device support for F2FS file system, additional Rust language code, a large number of updates and new drivers to provide first-class hardware support etc.
With that in mind, if your GNU/Linux distribution is running Linux kernel 6.3 (which is the case for many people), you'll need to ask your distribution maintainer to update the kernel packages to Linux 6.4. Arch Linux users are already getting the update, and it looks like openSUSE Tumbleweed and Fedora Linux users are about to get it as well.
Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) users can also install Linux kernel 6.4 using our tutorial. However, Linux kernel 6.4 is also a short-lived branch and will only be supported for 2-3 months, possibly until mid or late September 2023, so if you're looking for long-term support, upgrade to one of the LTS kernels.