On August 3, after many doubts about whether to launch an eighth Release Candidate, Linus Torvalds released the stable version of Linux 5.8. Although they already receive the label of "stable", distributions are not recommended to include it in their operating systems until they release a first maintenance version that corrects the first bugs, and that is what happened a few hours ago: that's it available Linux 5.8.1.
The latest version of the Linux kernel is very important. It includes a lot of new features and Torvalds says that about 20% of the code has been modified. The father of Linux is the one who takes care of the releases of the first versions, but maintenance is usually done by Greg Kroah-Hartman, who has already published this version and has it recommended for any distribution that wants to use it with more security and stability than the one that was launched more than a week ago.
Linux 5.8.1 now available for manual installation, soon on some distributions
Right now, whoever wants to install Linux 5.8.1 should do so from your tarball, available from this link. It can also be installed with the ukuu tool that we always mention, one that allows us to install any version of the kernel and to downgrade from a software with a GUI, which will be better for most users.
From now on, it is Linux distributions that have to offer the new version of the kernel as an update and the first to do so will be those that use the Rolling Release development model. If there are no surprises, something unlikely looking at the calendar, will be the kernel version that Ubuntu 20.10 will use Groovy Gorilla, which is scheduled to be released on October 22. In our article published at the beginning of the month you can see the list of the most outstanding news that comes with Linux 5.8. You can see it by clicking here.