On Fri Jan 2, 2026 at 2:02 PM CET, Jose Luis Alarcon Sanchez wrote: > Hi. > First of all, i'm new on Arch Linux, so i apologize if I'm asking > something that shouldn't be asked here. As I understand it, Arch is a > rolling release, so I'm a little surprised that the automatic jump to > kernel version 6.18 hasn't happened yet. > > Other Rolling Release distros have already switched to this kernel many > days ago. So, I would appreciate any brief explanation of how the > kernel version change occurs in Arch Linux. > > Thanks very much in advance. > > Regards, and Happy Year 2026 for everybody!. > Jose Luis.
Hi! First of all, welcome to Arch! :D *Usually* Arch skips x.y.0 kernel releases. If the team is able to make it available, it will, but customarily Arch waits until x.y.1 is released. This isn't against the concept of a rolling release... it's just about resources, priorities, checking that everything is in order, etc. Rolling release doesn't mean "always up to date with upstream," but only that distribution doesn't have a merge window-freeze-release cycle (e.g., like Debian or Ubuntu do). Also, point-zero kernel releases aren't that meaningful either. Torvalds has stated many times that he sees version numbers "meaningless." It's the patches that matter, and regarding patches, Arch does keep up with the latest bug and security fixes. Happy 2026! Ari -- Ariadna Vigo https://ariadnavigo.xyz gpg 0xC948873069856D6D
