Intel's Chen Yu has sent out a set of patches providing experimental support for in-kernel encryption support for hibernation.

There are many changes and new features for Linux 4.18 with the merge window having just closed on this next kernel version, but still there are some prominent features that have yet to work their way to the mainline tree.

Coming out one day ahead of schedule is the Linux 4.18-rc1 kernel.

Sent out earlier this week were the AppArmor feature updates for the Linux 4.18 kernel merge window.

Since the release of Linux 4.17 almost two weeks ago, I haven't heard of any horror stories, Linux 4.17 continues running excellent on all of my test systems, the 4.17.1 point release was quite small, and more distributions are gearing up to ship this latest kernel release.

In addition to the secondary power management updates sent in on Wednesday for the Linux 4.18 kernel merge window, a set of ACPI updates were also submitted.

The latest speculative execution vulnerability affecting modern CPUs has now been made public: Lazy State Save/Restore, a.k.a. CVE-2018-3665.

There is at least one interesting feature with the just-merged Device Mapper (DM) changes for the Linux 4.18 kernel.

For those that prefer waiting until the first point release of a new kernel series before upgrading, Linux 4.17.1 is out today.

While the Linux 4.18 kernel merge window isn't even over until the end of the week followed by about eight weeks worth of testing before that kernel version will debut as stable, Intel open-source developers have already sent in their first pull request to DRM-Next of material they would like to begin staging for Linux 4.19.

Adding to the list of new features for Linux 4.18 is the long-in-development work on the restartable sequences system call.

There are a lot of staging changes for the busy Linux 4.18 kernel merge window.

We are about half-way through the Linux 4.18 kernel merge window, so here is a look at the most interesting work that's been merged so far for this next kernel release that should debut as stable around mid-August.

Just as we have been expecting of the Steam Controller kernel driver to land with Linux 4.18, it's happening and has just been submitted as part of the HID subsystem updates for this next kernel release.

David Miller has submitted the big platter of networking updates for the in-development Linux 4.18 kernel.

The FUSE updates have been sent in for allowing file-systems in user-space, what Linus Torvalds previously referred to as being for toys and misguided people.

David Airlie, the subsystem maintainer for the Direct Rendering Manager, has submitted the big feature pull request today for the Linux 4.18 kernel. All of the DRM feature work yields a net gain of close to fifty-thousand lines of code for this cycle.

The Linux kernel has already been prepping for years for Year 2038 and that work is still ongoing with the in-development Linux 4.18 kernel.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has begun submitting the v4.18 pull requests for the multiple subsystems he maintains within the Linux kernel.

A Gentoo user has revised his kernel patch allowing the mainline Linux kernel to be built with the GCC "-march=native" compiler optimizations for targeting the kernel build against your particular CPU.

The scheduler updates submitted today for the Linux 4.18 kernel merge window include a few notable changes.

Based on yesterday's upstream Linux 4.17 kernel release, the FSF-approved GNU Linux-libre 4.17-gnu kernel is now available for a fully free software kernel on capable hardware configurations.

Rafael Wysocki has submitted the ACPI and power management updates already for the newly-opened Linux 4.18 merge window.

While there was a lot of last minute changes this week, Linus Torvalds has just gone ahead and officially released the Linux 4.17 kernel.

If all goes well, the Linux 4.17 kernel will debut as stable today. Linus Torvalds last week indicated that this next kernel stable release could be coming for this weekend, but there has been a lot of changes merged in recent days, so we'll see if Linus is still leaning towards releasing today or instead opts for Linux 4.17-rc8. Whatever he ends up deciding, there are a lot of great changes with Linux 4.17.

Since the unveiling of Spectre Variant Four last month ARM has been publishing patches for their mitigation for the 64-bit ARM CPUs. While the Intel/AMD and POWER mitigation landed for Linux 4.17, the SSBD work on AArch64 is landing for Linux 4.18.

Adding to the list of new features coming for Linux 4.18 is BPFILTER.

A major rewrite of the Linux kernel's HID multi-touch input code has been announced in order to support newer input devices and other improvements.

While this past week for kernel development has been busier than in prior weeks, Linus Torvalds today released Linux 4.17-rc7 and feels the official/stable release might be ready next week.

Adding to the list of changes coming to Linux 4.18 are updates to CPUFreq's "Schedutil" CPU frequency scaling governor.