14 DAY TRIAL // Linus Torvalds has announced that the final version of Linux kernel 3.14 has been released and is now available for download.
Linux kernel 3.14 has been one of the most anticipated kernel releases in quite a while, mostly due to the large amount of features that have been added. It's also quite a round number for Linux kernel (3.14 is also Pi).
This version of the kernel should have been made available a week ago, but due to some unforeseen problems and last minute patches, Linux Torvalds decided to postpone the release. Now, the final build of the new Linux kernel branch is here.
“So we had a few fairly late changes that I could have done without, but the changelog from -rc8 is still pretty small, and I'm feeling pretty good about it all. If we did end up with any last-minute problems due to the final spurt of patches, they'll be pretty specific, and it really didn't make sense to me to delay the release without anything known pending. Much of the final spurt were either marked for stable or known regressions.”
“So 3.14 is out there, and the merge window for 3.15 is thus open. Please do spend the time to test out 3.14, though, even if you might otherwise be in a hurry to send me your pending queue for the next release,” said Linus Torvalds in the official announcement.
It is not known at this moment whether this branch of the kernel will also become LTS (long term support) in the near future, but there are a lot of Linux distributions developers out there who are just itching to get their hands on a fresh kernel.
One of those distros must have been Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Unfortunately for Canonical, the final version of Linux kernel arrived too late in the game for them. The developers do have a few point releases planned, so it's very likely that the first major update for Ubuntu 14.04 will also come with a new kernel.
Linux kernel 3.14 will probably feature 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. And these are just a few major features that have been implemented in 3.14.
A complete list of changes, improvements, and fixes can be found in the official changelog. You can download Linux kernel 3.14 right now from Softpedia.