14 DAY TRIAL // The latest version of the Linux kernel, 3.15.1, has been announced by Greg Kroah-Hartman, making this branch the most advanced stable release ready for download.
Linux kernel 3.14.x used to be the latest kernel up until now. A new branch, 3.15.x, is now the latest stable release, a week after it got promoted from the development cycle, which also makes it the most advanced.
It's going to be a while until the 3.15 branch is integrated into various distributions out there, but there will be a few OSes, like Arch Linux for example, that will provide the latest kernel as soon as possible.
“I'm announcing the release of the 3.15.1 kernel. All users of the 3.15 kernel series must upgrade.”
“The updated 3.15.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.
As you can see from the shortlog, this is actually a very small build, but this is normal, especially for newly-released branches. Developers tend to focus their attention on the next Release Candidate, but there is also no need to make patches for a fresh version.
According to the changelog, Sveon STV20 and Sveon STV27 support has been added, a memory leak in free_msi_irqs() has been fixed (PCI/MSI), a PCI ID has been added for the Marvell 88SE91A0 SATA Controller (ahci), inode_capable has been changed to capable_wrt_inode_uidgid (fs,userns), and audit_krule mask accesses now has bounds checking.
Also, 1b80:d395 Peak DVB-T USB support has been implemented, a Device ID for HighPoint RocketRaid 642L has been added, the hw ready reset flow has been fixed, the harmful wait optimization has been dropped, and H_CSR is now read after asserting reset.
If you are using any of the versions released until now in the Linux kernel 3.15.x branch, you should consider an update to this build. It's also a good idea to try the new 3.16 RC1 kernel, although it hasn't been deemed stable yet and it will be in development for a while.
Linux Kernel 3.15 will most likely get quite a few updates before it gets retired, although Greg Kroah-Hartman, the maintainer, hasn't said whether this will become an LTS release or he will retire this version quickly.
A complete list of commits in this branch of the kernel can be found in the official announcement. You can download Linux kernel 3.15.1 right now from Softpedia.