Linus Trovelds Officially shipped the much awaited Linux Kernel 4.18 after4 a week delay due to some minor bugs in networking and ashmem .
Linux kernel 4.18 has lighter release with 100 thousand fewer lines of codes as compared to Linux Kernel 4.17.
Some major improvements in Linux kernel 4.18
Improved AMDGPU support and complete Raspberry Pi 3B and 3B+ support. There’s an initial support for Vega M graphics and Intel Ice Lake Gen 11 graphics as well.
The 32 Bit ARM Architecture gets the Spectre 1 and 2 variant patches .
The Steam Controller HID driver was merged into the kernel. This allows using Valve’s Steam Controller as a HID input device without needing to rely upon Steam or the user-space SC-Controller.
WireGuard is a VPN, similar to OpenVPN or IPSec, but much more efficient, according to Linus. In his words, WireGuard is “a work of art,” but, unfortunately, it has not made it into the main trunk of this time around. It does remain available as a module, notwithstanding.
Support for Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, a SoC used by many high-end mobile devices.
A new kernel polling interface for asynchronous I/O.
Restartable sequences, a “mechanism for lockless concurrency control in user space”.