Greg Kroah-Hartman and Sasha Levin delivered stable point updates for three active LTS kernels on August 3, 2026, introducing v6.18.42, v6.12.101, and v6.6.148 to the stable queue. These builds prioritize security and stability, packing critical patches for ksmbd ACL validation, dm-verity buffer overflows, and BPF memory safety issues across all tracks. Driver maintainers focused heavily on reliability, notably converting BUG_ON() calls to WARN_ON() in the AMDGPU subsystem from gfx8 to gfx12 and backporting a major 1,900-line refactor of the DRM buddy allocator. With the mainline kernel advancing toward v7.2-rc6, these updates ensure existing LTS deployments continue receiving vital fixes well past December 2027.
Linux LTS Kernel 6.18.42, 6.12.101, and 6.6.148 land with security patches and AMDGPU fixes
Greg Kroah-Hartman drops stable updates across all three active LTS tracks, including hardening for ksmbd and the network stack.
The Linux kernel stable queue took a hit on August 3, 2026, with three new point releases landing across the active LTS tracks. v6.18.42, v6.12.101, and v6.6.148 are now available via kernel.org. Greg Kroah-Hartman and Sasha Levin's team pushed these builds to address a mix of security hardening, memory safety issues, and a handful of driver reliability tweaks.
Keep in mind that the mainline kernel is sitting at 7.1.6 right now, with 7.2-rc6 arriving yesterday in what Linus Torvalds called the biggest rc6 in years. If you're running production hardware, though, you're likely not chasing rc kernels. These LTS updates are what you want. The lifecycle table shows 6.18 and 6.12 staying alive until December 2028, while 6.6 wraps up a bit sooner in December 2027.
Linux 6.18.42
Starting with the newest LTS, v6.18.42 brings a healthy dose of security hardening. Mikulas Patocka plugged a buffer overflow in dm-verity FEC calculation. BPF saw an OOB read and pointer leak in sock_ops patched by Jiayuan Chen. The ksmbd team, including Namjae Jeon, Wentao Guan, and Haofeng Li, ran multiple ACL validation fixes to stop malformed Access Control Lists from causing trouble. Jann Horn also cleaned up broken error paths for namespace links in /proc.
The AMDGPU fixes are welcome. Converting BUG_ON() to WARN_ON() across gfx8 through gfx12 and SDMA means fewer system panics when the hardware grumbles. That's good news for anyone running graphics on the desktop or server side. Asad Kamal fixed an aperture mapping leak, and Boyuan Zhang caught a division by zero in UVD dimensions and an integer overflow in VCE image size.
Filesystem work includes a 147-line patch from Darrick J. Wong to fix the cow fork in XFS. The rtase driver gets a TX hang workaround that swallows over 200 lines of code. Next, the networking fixes round out the tree with a TCP challenge ACK for non-exact RST packets and a peer refcount leak fix in OpenVPN.
Linux kernel 6.18.42 released
Linux kernel version 6.18.42 is now available:
Full source: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/linux-6.18.42.tar.xz
Patch: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/patch-6.18.42.xz
PGP Signature: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/linux-6.18.42.tar.sign
You can view the summary of the changes at the following URL:
https://git.kernel.org/stable/ds/v6.18.42/v6.18.41
Linux 6.12.101
v6.12.101 focuses heavily on the networking stack and some structural cleanups. David Howells delivered an extensive patch series for rxrpc, fixing socket notification races and CPU time starvation in the I/O thread. Bluetooth LE Audio support gets a sanity check: Luiz Augusto von Dentz and Yang Li added the +25 lines needed to account for BIS/CIS/PA links separately.
Joel Fernandes led a roughly 1,900-line refactor of the DRM buddy allocator, moving it one level up in the directory tree. That's a clean organizational win. Netfilter also got lighter as Florian Westphal stripped 693 lines of dead register tracking infrastructure.
Memory management saw a hugetlb cgroup charge mismatch fixed by Deepanshu Kartikey. Landlock got a +35 line patch from Bryam Vargas to close a SIGIO bypass.
Linux kernel 6.12.101 released
Linux kernel version 6.12.101 is now available:
Full source: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/linux-6.12.101.tar.xz
Patch: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/patch-6.12.101.xz
PGP Signature: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/linux-6.12.101.tar.sign
You can view the summary of the changes at the following URL:
https://git.kernel.org/stable/ds/v6.12.101/v6.12.100
Linux 6.6.148
The 6.6 track, EOL in December 2027, received v6.6.148 this morning. Ricardo Robaina fixed a recursive locking deadlock in audit_dupe_exe(). The ksmbd ACL work shows up here too, matching the patches in the newer kernels. Jason Wang added a two-line fix to vduse to stop leaking information to userspace.
If you're on 6.6, you're likely in enterprise or embedded territory. This kernel is well-tested and conservative. You're getting the same ksmbd hardening and AMDGPU reliability fixes as the newer trees, which is exactly what you should expect. Tejun Heo and Marco Crivellari factor out init_cpu_worker_pool() and added system_percpu_wq and system_dfl_wq to workqueue subsystems.
Common themes run through all three trees. The network stack keeps getting tightened up. Use-after-free vulnerabilities in net/x25, net/af_iucv, and phonet/pep found their way into the fixes. mac802154 is rejecting frames shorter than the authentication tag across the board.
Linux kernel 6.6.148 released
Linux kernel version 6.6.148 is now available:
Full source: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/linux-6.6.148.tar.xz
Patch: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/patch-6.6.148.xz
PGP Signature: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/linux-6.6.148.tar.sign
You can view the summary of the changes at the following URL:
https://git.kernel.org/stable/ds/v6.6.148/v6.6.147
