Many other features have been added in this kernel branch

Oct 6, 2014 07:44 GMT  ·  By

The final version of Linux kernel 3.17 has been made available by Linus Torvalds and this branch is now the latest stable that’s ready for download.

The Linux kernel development schedule is now back on track with the new 3.17 release and no more problems have stopped the launch of a new stable version. Linus Torvalds gave us a little scare last week, when he decided not to promote the final 3.17 kernel, but it looks like things have settled down.

This is the beginning of a new kernel branch, but it's unsure for how long it will last. If you take a look at the list of current maintained and alive kernels, you will see that all of them have even numbers. The last kernel with an odd version number was 3.15 and it only received a few point releases before reaching end of life.

A calm Linux kernel development cycle is a good thing

No major problems have been noted in the development versions of Linux kernel 3.17, and this has greatly sped up the process. In the previous iteration of the kernel, for example, the devs found a problem with the GCC compiler, which made Linus very upset, to say the least.

"So the past week was fairly calm, and so I have no qualms about releasing 3.17 on the normal schedule (as opposed to the optimistic 'maybe I can release it one week early' schedule that was not to be). However, I now have travel coming up - something I hoped to avoid when I was hoping for releasing early. Which means that while 3.17 is out, I'm not going to be merging stuff very actively next week, and the week after that is LinuxCon EU..."

"What that means is that depending on how you want to see it, the 3.18 merge window will either be three weeks, or alternatively just have a rather slow start. I don't mind getting pull requests starting now (in fact, I have a couple already pending in my inbox), but I likely won't start processing them for a week," says Linus Torvalds in his regular email address.

Linux kernel 3.17 comes with some pretty interesting features, such as much better Intel Broadwell support, improvements for the open source version of the NVIDIA drivers, more Radeon features, and Xbox One controller support (yes, the one from Microsoft), just to name a few.

You can download Linux kernel 3.17 from Softpedia, but these are just the sources. If you want to use the new kernel, you will have to compile it. Canonical provides a few binary files for the latest kernel, but you could ruin your system, so install them at your own risk.