Linux Kernel 3.9 RC3 Officially Released by Linus Torvalds

On March 17, Linus Torvalds announced the immediate availability of the third release candidate in the 3.9 branch of the Linux kernel.

According to Linus Torvalds, this latest version of Linux kernel is not big and implements a regular number of changes and improvements.

“Not as small as -rc2, but that one really was unusually calm. So there was clearly some pending stuff that came in for -rc3, with network drivers and USB leading the charge. But there's other misc drivers, arch updates, btrfs fixes, etc etc too,” stated Linus Torvalds in the announcement.

Highlights of Linux kernel 3.9 RC3:

• Disable RFS when running in SRIOV mode;
• The link setup for I210 devices has been fixed;
• Support for Cinterion's products AH6 and PLS8 has been added;
• Disable IDT eapd_switch if there are no internal speakers;
• Timestamp option cannot overflow with pre-specified addresses;
• The USB ports have been enabled on Armada 370 Reference Design board;
• Broken gpmc support has been fixed;
• Support for Altera serial port has been added.
• Header dependencies related build error have been repaired;
• Missing GFP_DMA flag for atomic buffer allocation has been added;
• Documentation for recent touchpad driver mods has been updated;
• Cleanup MAC resources on module unload or port stop;
• Set IFF_UNICAST_FLT flag to prevent unnecessary promisc mode;
• A few unmet direct dependencies for zoom have been fixed for 8250 serial;
• Do not return EINVAL in snapshot when not allocated;
• A kernel crash with PEBS / BTS after suspend / resume has been fixed;
• Support has been added for 8 port 'Unknown' PCI serial port cards.

More details about the updates and the new features in the kernel can be found in the official announcement.

Download Linux kernel 3.9 RC3 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a development release and it is intended for testing purposes only.