The latest stable Linux Kernel 5.8 has finally been released after seven release candidates, with the new mainline release succeeding Linux Kernel 5.7.
While Linux 5.8 received the highest numbers of merge requests during its merge window, which Linus Torvalds dubbed “the biggest release of all time” even surpassing the previous record set by Linux Kernel 4.9, as the latest stable release now consists of over 17595 commits.
Albeit, Linux Kernel 5.8 may not be the biggest release ever as regards git status, according to the data aggregated by Thorsteen Leemhuis, also known as “The Linux Kernel Logger.” To see the git status on any Linux kernel, you'll need to check out the data aggregated data here.
What's New in Linux kernel 5.8?
Linux Kernel 5.8 brings several new changes ranging from memory management to file system, including hardware support, graphics, security, drivers, and many more. Find the key changes below:
- Support for ARM SoC and platform
- Support for Inline Encryption hardware
- Support for swapping Fn and Ctrl keys on Apple keyboard
- Extended IPv6 Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) support
- Qualcomm Adreno 405, 640, and 650 GPUs driver support
- Support for Shadow Call Stack and Branch Target Identification in ARM64
- Thunderbolt support for Intel Tiger Lake and non-x86 systems
- Intel Tiger Lake Thunderbolt support
Additionally, Linux Kernel 5.8 has also brought improvements to Microsoft exFAT drivers, EXT4, Btrfs file systems, and the open-source AMD Radeon graphics drivers.
How to Download Linux Kernel 5.8
Linux Kernel 5.8 is now available for download from the official page. And for users on a rolling Linux distro like Arch Linux, they'll be able to get it easily by updating their system.
While for other Linux distros like Debian and Ubuntu, Linux Kernel 5.8 is not made available early as they focus on stability and therefore discourages users to try it. But you can download it directly from the mainline Ubuntu kernel page for manual installation.
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