The stable release of Linux Kernel 3.18 has been released this weekend. Linus Torvalds wrote on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml.org):

It’s been a quiet week, and the patch from rc7 is tiny, so 3.18 is out.

I’d love to say that we’ve figured out the problem that plagues 3.17 for a couple of people, but we haven’t. At the same time, there’s absolutely no point in having everybody else twiddling their thumbs when a couple of people are actively trying to bisect an older issue, so holding up the release just didn’t make sense. Especially since that would just have then held things up entirely over the holiday
break.

So the merge window for 3.19 is open, and DaveJ will hopefully get his bisection done (or at least narrow things down sufficiently that we have that “Ahaa” moment) over the next week. But in solidarity with
Dave (and to make my life easier too ;) let’s try to avoid introducing any _new_ nasty issues, ok?

Linus

What’s New in the Linux Kernel 3.18:

The Linux 3.18 Kernel brings many great changes, here’s some of the highlights for end-users:

• Unified Video Decoder (UVD) support for old ATI/AMD GPUs of the Radeon HD 3000 series.
• Re-clocking improvements for AMD’s Radeon driver.
• Userptr support for AMD Radeon GPUs.
• Razer Sabertooth support and other hardware input devices improvements for gamers.
• Faster suspend and resume for large Linux servers.
• Btrfs and F2FS improvements.
• Para-virtualized SCSI (pvSCSI) support for Xen virtualization.
• DisplayPort audio support, fan control improvements and various other enhancements for open-source NVIDIA driver.
• OverlayFS was finally merged into Linux Kernel 3.18

Install / Upgrade to Linux Kernel 3.18 in Ubuntu:

The Ubuntu Kernel Team has made the binary packages of this kernel release, available for download at the link below:

Download Kernel 3.18 (.deb)

First check out your OS type, 32-bit (i386) or 64-bit (amd64), then download and install the packages below in turn:

1. linux-headers-3.18.0-031800_xxx_all.deb
2. linux-headers-3.18.0-031800-generic_3.18.0-031800.xxx_i386/amd64.deb
3. linux-image-3.18.0-031800-generic_3.18.0-031800.xxx_i386/amd64.deb

For Ubuntu Servers without UI, run the commands below one by one to download & install the kernel debs.

For 64-bit system, run:

cd /tmp/

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.18-vivid/linux-headers-3.18.0-031800-generic_3.18.0-031800.201412071935_amd64.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.18-vivid/linux-headers-3.18.0-031800_3.18.0-031800.201412071935_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.18-vivid/linux-image-3.18.0-031800-generic_3.18.0-031800.201412071935_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.18.0-*.deb linux-image-3.18.0-*.deb

For 32-bit system, run:

cd /tmp/

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.18-vivid/linux-headers-3.18.0-031800-generic_3.18.0-031800.201412071935_i386.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.18-vivid/linux-headers-3.18.0-031800_3.18.0-031800.201412071935_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.18-vivid/linux-image-3.18.0-031800-generic_3.18.0-031800.201412071935_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.18.0-*.deb linux-image-3.18.0-*.deb

When done, run sudo update-grub command to refresh grub bootloader and restart your computer.

NOTE: If you’re running with a proprietary video driver, either switch to open-source driver or reinstall the latest (For Nvidia, >= 343.36).

If for some reason, the new kernel does not work properly for you, reboot with the previous Kernel (Grub boot loader -> Advanced -> select previous kernel) and run below command to remove Linux Kernel 3.18:

sudo apt-get remove linux-headers-3.18.0-* linux-image-3.18.0-* && sudo update-grub