XanMod ships three new kernel releases simultaneously across all branches
The rolling project drops 6.18.49, 7.1.13, and 7.2.3 with upstream patches, LLVM optimizations, and a fresh Edge tier.
Following today's kernel releases, XanMod maintainer Alexandre Frade pushed out three new XanMod kernel builds across the project's entire distribution matrix. If you are running XanMod on Debian, Ubuntu, or one of the other supported derivatives, you have fresh upstream fixes and a smorgasbord of optimizations waiting in your APT cache.
What is in the build
XanMod has spent more than a decade refining a simple philosophy: apply custom patches and aggressive build flags on top of upstream Linux, do not fork the code, and hand out prebuilt packages for x86-64 Debian-based systems. The new trio follows that exact playbook.
The LTS branch pulls Linux 6.18.49. It keeps the x64v1 package intact for older silicon. If you are still running an AMD K8 family chip or an early Intel Pentium 4, that legacy baseline still gets you a compiled kernel with reasonable performance. The mainline and Edge branches move up to 7.1.13 and 7.2.3 respectively, targeting CPUs from 2009 onward with x64v2 and x64v3 packages.
Build optimizations include LLVM software pipelining, polyhedral transformations, and heavier x86_64 tuning for load balancing, caching, and the virtual memory manager. The block layer gets tuned for high IOPS throughput. If you prefer not to run the bleeding edge, the 6.18.49 PREEMPT_RT build is still in the repo for latency sensitive workloads.
Notable upstream patches
Every release absorbs the same upstream stable patch sets, which means a solid chunk of security and memory safety fixes land regardless of which branch you pick. The usbfs tree gets a use-after-free patch in usbdev_release() that is reachable by unprivileged processes. ALSA usb-audio fixes an out-of-bounds write in snd_usbmidi_novation_output() that a malicious USB device could trigger with a crafted wMaxPacketSize.
Networking and crypto subsystems see cleanup across the board. KVM s390 now zeroes stale crypto bits to block nested guest access. The ARM QCE hardware crypto engine drops deprecated AES-ECB, DES, and Triple DES algorithms. The crypto_rng interface gets phased out of sun8i-ss/ce and qcom-rng to remove older use-after-free and buffer overread vectors.
USB audio also gets a complete cleanup after system-resume errors, which means a failed resume no longer bricks your card until you reboot. Wifi mt76 mt7925 drivers now ensure TX headroom in USB/SDIO mode, preventing a kernel BUG when bridging wired interfaces.
Installation and the DKMS warning
The APT repository at deb.xanmod.org covers bookworm, trixie, noble, plucky, questing, resolute, stonking, and a handful of other Debian and Ubuntu codenames. You will want to pick the package that matches your CPU tier. The check_x86-64_psabi.sh script from the project site helps if you are unsure.
NVIDIA drivers sit in the repo alongside the kernels. Production 595.99.02 and the new feature branch 610.57.04 both ship with open kernel modules. Keep in mind that DKMS modules sometimes lag behind new kernel releases. XanMod explicitly warns that NVIDIA, OpenZFS, VirtualBox, and VMware Workstation/Player DKMS modules may not support the latest kernels right now. If you rely on one of those, test in a VM before overwriting your boot partition.
Head here to the official XanMod website.
