When you’re busy gaming, creating a presentation, or compiling your codebase, it’s easy to forget about the kernel that’s at the heart of everything your computer does.You might not even think it gets updated all that often, and you probably don’t pay much attention to it when it does.But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening! In fact, there’s more to the kernel than you might realize, and this software receives updates about as often as any app you’re running.
How does the Linux kernel update? An automatic process that should just work First, be reassured that you don’t really need to worry too much about kernel updates, provided your system is set up to download and install security updates automatically, or you do so manually on a regular basis.Updates will include the latest kernel version that your distro supports, including patches for bugs and security updates.You’ll need to reboot after upgrading your kernel.
Some distros support live patching, but this is only really used for important security patches, and you may need to pay for it.For example, the Ubuntu Pro subscription service includes live kernel patching, with some conditions for personal home use.When you update the kernel, your system will write the newer version to your local filesystem; by convention, it lives in /boot/vmlinuz and is a symlink pointing to another file in the same directory, with a name like vmlinuz-7.0.0-28-generic.
Run uname --kernel-release (-r) to see the full version of your current kernel.Note that your system should keep a copy of your previous kernel, symlinked as /boot/vmlinuz.old.This lets you roll back, should you run into serious problems with the latest version.
Close Kernel updates go beyond mere security fixes, however.The kernel is constantly being improved to support more hardware, speed up your system, and run everything more smoothly.The 7.0 kernel update, from April 2026 A massive update focusing on stable Rust support The 7.0 release launched in April 2026, acting as a bridge between the 6.x and 7.x lines.
It is now officially unsupported, in favor of the 7.1 line.A significant 7.0 development was the promoted support for Rust in the kernel, which is now stable.This confirms that the fast, safe programming language is here to stay, with testing complete and a long-term commitment from the maintainers firmly in place.
From this point on, we should see an increasing number of drivers and kernel subsystems adopting a Rust-first approach.If you’re one of the brave souls running Linux on an Apple Silicon Mac, you’ll probably benefit from the improved USB-C support in this release.The relevant drivers are now enabled by default, and every port should now be available for both USB 2 and USB 3 data.
Intel’s next-gen CPUs—Nova Lake and Diamond Rapids—are both supported by this version of the kernel, well in advance of their actual release.There are also plenty of optimizations and related features in this release, beginning with Time Slice Extension, which gives threads more time to finish before being switched out.Memory allocation is also faster, up to an order of magnitude, and there’s faster container creation, too, for uses of Docker and Kubernetes.
The 7.1 kernel update, from June 2026 Improvements for NTFS and both Intel and Apple Silicon More recently, the 7.1 kernel update dropped in June 2026, culminating in the release of 7.1.4—the latest stable release, as we speak—on the 18th of July.This release adds a new NTFS driver to replace older legacy code, which introduces improvements across the board.It uses more modern kernel infrastructure for stability, increases write speeds significantly, enables more reliable dual-booting, and supports a robust version of the fsck program to check and repair NTFS systems.
7.1 also enables Intel FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) by default; this architecture benefits from improved performance and more robust software.Heavy I/O workloads and network applications will see the most benefit here.Finally, 7.1 includes a lot of cleanup work, removing over 140,000 lines of legacy code.
This includes removing code for the i486 x86 sub-architecture and some PCI and PCMCIA drivers.The 7.2 kernel update, due in August 2026 A massive update with CPU, HDMI, and EXT4 improvements You probably won’t be updating to it straight away, but the 7.2 kernel is due to arrive any day now.It takes the source code beyond a whopping 43 million lines, across more than 100,000 files.
This update includes some big-ticket features, including cache-aware scheduling, which improves task placement on modern Intel and AMD CPUs.There’s also support for the USB4STREAM protocol, allowing data to be transferred directly over USB4/Thunderbolt at fast rates.There are also plenty of graphics improvements, like support for HDMI 2.1 FRL; this will bring higher resolutions and faster refresh rates to modern AMD Radeon graphics cards.
With its vital role in the ecosystem, your kernel deserves an update The Linux kernel is relied upon by machines all around the world, from the Android phone in your pocket to the mainframes and servers powering our data centers.It’s in a state of continuous maintenance to support a wealth of hardware and to make it run more effectively every day.You can check out the latest kernel roadmap—produced by Guodong Xu, one of the kernel developers—for a full view of what’s coming this year.
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