Planning to upgrade or install Ubuntu 23.10 when it’s released in the autumn? If so, you can look forward to an experience powered by the Linux 6.5 kernel.
While the Linux 6.5 kernel is yet to be released yet, the stars (or rather the release calendars) have aligned to make its inclusion in the “Mantic Minotaur” a dead-cert. Current daily builds of Ubuntu 23.10 include the Linux 6.3 kernel.
Linux 6.5 is due for release in mid to late August. Ubuntu 23.10’s kernel freeze takes effect on September 28. And the final stable release of Ubuntu 23.10 goes live on October 12. Development of Linux 6.6 will be underway by this point but it won’t be “ready” enough to squeak in.
But that’s not a bad thing: Linux 6.5 (naturally) offers a ton of improvements, enablements, enhancements, etc — especially when compared to the Linux 6.2 kernel Ubuntu 23.04 ships with.
Plus, the kernel Ubuntu ships with will include some additional niceties, such as desktop-focused tuning for the low latency kernel and multi-gen LRU page reclaiming enabled by default (something Fedora and Arch Linux already do, and openSUSE and Debian plan to).
Anyone riding the Ubuntu 23.10 daily builds can install an experimental build of this kernel from Canonical’s Unstable Kernel Builds PPA (usual unstable PPA cautions apply) ahead of it making its formal debut in Ubuntu 23.10 development builds in the oh-so near future.
Long-term support users will also benefit as the kernel version shipped in Ubuntu 23.10 will be back-ported to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS as a future update.