Greg Kroah-Hartman today extended the planned maintenance periods of the latest [1]Linux 6.18 , Linux 6.12, and Linux 6.6 Long Term Support (LTS) kernel series.

Today's move extends the Linux 6.18 LTS period by one year in the current end-of-life (EOL) being set for December 2027, but it's possible that will be extended further if there is sufficient interest/demand. Linux 6.12 LTS is extended by two years from December 2026 to 2028. Linux 6.6 LTS is planned to EOL now at the end of 2027 rather than 2026.

Greg remarked in the [2]commit updating the LTS timelines:

"Based on lots of discussions with different companies and groups and the other stable kernel maintainer, this moves to show that the current status is:

5.10 to be supported for 6 years

5.15 to be supported for 5 years

6.6 to be supported for 4 years

6.12 to be supported for 4 years

6.18 to be supported for at least 3 years"



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Linux+6.18

[2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/kernel/website.git/commit/?id=d04587da86a3464881e0c97aabddd2c271105698