How to patch Meltdown CPU Vulnerability CVE-2017-5754 on Linux

Originally published at: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/patch-meltdown-cpu-vulnerability-cve-2017-5754-linux/

A very serious security problem has been found in the Intel CPUs. Meltdown CPU Vulnerability CVE-2017-5754 breaks the most fundamental isolation between user applications and the operating system. This attack allows a program to access the memory, and thus also the secrets, of other programs and the operating system. How do I protect my Linux server and laptop/desktop against such attack?