14 DAY TRIAL // Today, November 29, 2016, Linux kernel maintainer Jiri Slaby announced the release and general availability of the sixty-eighth maintenance update to the long-term supported Linux 3.12 kernel series.
It's been two weeks since Linux kernel 3.12.67 LTS hit the streets with its numerous PowerPC and CIFS improvements, and now Linux kernel 3.12.68 LTS is out with lots of fixes and updated drivers. A total of 130 files were changed, with 1261 insertions and 527 deletions, according to the appended shortlog and the diff from the previous point release.
"I'm announcing the release of the 3.12.68 kernel. All users of the 3.12 kernel series must upgrade," said Jiri Slaby. "The updated 3.12.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.12.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."
Highlights of the changes in Linux kernel 3.12.68 LTS
Linux kernel 3.12.68 LTS brings numerous improvements for the SPARC hardware architectures, but also various fixes to MIPS, ARM, s390, PA-RISC, and x86 support. There are lots of updated drivers in this release, including for ACPI, FireWire, GPU (mostly Radeon), HID, HV, InfiniBand, IOMMU, MMC, MTD, PCI, PWM, SCSI, TTY, USB, UWB, and Xen.
A couple of EXT4 fixes are also present, along with minor improvements to the XFS and UBIFS filesystems, and it looks like the sound and networking stacks have been updated with Intel HDA, as well as IPv6, IPv4, Netfilter, mac80211, DCCP, Bridge, and SCTP changes. If you're using a GNU/Linux distro powered by a kernel from the Linux 3.12 LTS series, please update to version 3.12.68 as soon as possible.