14 DAY TRIAL // The latest version of the stable Linux kernel, 3.14.8, has been announced by Greg Kroah-Hartman, marking the release of another update in this branch.
3.14.x is no longer the newest kernel that you can get for your distribution and its place has been taken by the 3.15 branch. Even if that is the case, this is still one of the most advanced releases that you can find and it's still a very popular choice for many Linux distributions.
The development for 3.14.x has been winding down now that 3.15 kernel is already out, and there are fewer changes and improvements in this latest update. It's still being maintained, but the focus has shifted to other branches.
“I'm announcing the release of the 3.14.8 kernel. All users of the 3.14 kernel series must upgrade.”
“The updated 3.14.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.14.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=summary,” Greg Kroah-Hartman said in the email announcement.
According to the changelog, a memory leak in free_msi_irqs() has been fixed (PCI/MSI), the PCI ID for Marvell 88SE91A0 SATA Controller has been added (ahci), inode_capable has been changed to capable_wrt_inode_uidgid, the audit_krule mask accesses no longer need bounds checking, 1b80:d395 Peak DVB-T USB support has been added, and the USB ID for Genius TVGo DVB-T03 has been implemented.
Also, the chipset version comments are now present in the device list, a Device ID for HighPoint RocketRaid 642L has been added, the _TIF_SECCOMP flag is now available, a multi-network portal shutdown regression has been fixed, READ_CAPACITY opcode is now allowed in the ALUA Standby access state, accepting transport connections during stop stage is now properly avoided, the ID TerraTec NOXON DAB Stick has been added, the hw ready reset flow has been fixed, some harmful wait optimizations have been dropped, and H_CSR is now read after asserting a reset.
If you are using any of the versions released until now in the Linux kernel 3.14.x branch, you should consider an update to this build. It's also a good idea to try the new 3.15 kernel, which has already received an update.
Linux kernel 3.14 features, among other things, better Intel Broadwell graphics support, various Radeon improvements, Nouveau improvements (support for new GPUs from NVIDIA), quite a few Btrfs changes, and even NVIDIA Tegra PRIME support.
A complete list of commits in this branch of the kernel can be found in the official announcement. You can download Linux kernel 3.14.8 right now from Softpedia.