Linux Kernel 6.16 Reaches EOL
Linux kernel 6.16 has reached its end of life, which means you'll need to upgrade to the next stable release, Linux kernel 6.17.
It's that time again: a Linux kernel has reached its end of life (EOL), so pour a drink out for yet another kernel that served us well.
Greg Kroah-Hartman announced on the Kernel.org site the following: "...this is the LAST 6.16.y kernel release, this branch is now end-of-life. Please move to the 6.17.y branch at this point in time."
Linux kernel 6.17 was released in September with features such as support for AMD's Hardware Feedback Interface (HFI) and Intel Panther Lake Xe3 graphics, attack vector controls for CPU mitigations, live patching for AArch64 systems, support for the Raspberry Pi 5 RP1 I/O chip, improvements for filesystems like ext4 and Btrfs, and networking enhancements such as gateway routing for the MCTP subsystem.
Fortunately, Linux kernel 6.17 has already found its way into the standard repositories for most distributions, which means an upgrade should include the latest iteration. If you run the uname -r command and you see your distribution is still running kernel 6.16 after an upgrade, keep checking back and make sure to install the latest version as soon as it's available.
One thing to keep in mind is that Linux kernel 6.17 will only enjoy support for a very short period. If you need long-term support, the most recent version is 6.12, which will see an EOL in December 2026.
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