The Linux Kernel 4.17 series has reached the end of its life early last week with the release of maintenance version number 19 (Linux 4.17.19) and will not receive any further updates.
Released by the famous Linus Torvalds on June 3, 2018, the Linux Kernel 4.17 series introduces better hardware support thanks to the inclusion of support for Intel's Cannon Lake architecture, as well as support for Nvidia Tegra Xavier processors.
Additionally, it added support for the upcoming Radeon Vega 12 graphics cards and removed various micro-architectures including Blackfin, CRIS, FR-V, M32R, Metag, MN10300, SCORE, and TILE.
Linux Kernel 4.17 enabled support for Display Code in the free AMDGPU driver for HDMI audio / video, HDCP support and improved power management were added.
Linux Kernel 4.17 reaches the end of its cycle
Like all things, Linux Kernel 4.17 has reached the end of its cycle with the most recent update, Linux 4.17.19, released on August 24th. This means that there will be no more updates, so it is recommended to update to Linux Kernel 4.18 as soon as possible.
Linux Kernel 4.18 was released by Linus earlier this month, specifically on August 12th, this release introduces fix for Specter Variant 1 and 2 vulnerabilities on ARM 32-bit architecture and fix for Specter Variant 4 vulnerability for ARM64 (AArch64) and ARMv8 architecture.
Also new in Linux Kernel 4.18 is the improved support for USB-C and USB 3.2, official support for Snapdragon 845 processor and runtime compiler for eBPF programs in 32-bit architecture, plus better support for the F2FS file type.
Although it is recommended to update, remember that you must do it through the official repositories of your distribution, in case you have an extended support version, it is not necessary to install this version.