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Linus Torvalds releases Linux 3.18 as 3.17 wobbles

Seven release candidates is enough

Linus Torvalds has pressed the go button for a new release of his eponymous kernel.

Linux version 3.18 was loosed on Sunday, US time, after what Torvalds wrote was a “tiny” patch to get release candidate 7 done.

The new version's headline features for business users are better sleep and resumption for Linux servers, more support (thanks to a contributor from Samsung) for the The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) and some RAID-friendly tweaks to BTRFS. There's also lots more support for graphics devices from NVIDIA and AMD.

Torvalds' announcement also says “I'd love to say that we've figured out the problem that plagues 3.17 for a couple of people, but we haven't.”

The problem Torvalds is referring to appears to be an occasional lockup in Linux 3.17, perhaps when running Xen. Testers of Linux 3.18 release candidates reported similar issues and the problem appears also to manifest in the last Linux release.

Whatever the source of the problem, it's not of sufficient magnitude to have stopped the release of 3.18.

Torvalds has now opened the merge window for Linux 3.19. New released of Linux appear about every six to eight weeks. The Linux Lord is making his usual pilgrimage to Linux.conf.au, which this year takes place in Auckland, New Zealand in mid-January. Between the festive season and that trip, the smart money would be on 3.19 landing in March. ®

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