14 DAY TRIAL // Linux kernel developer Jiri Slaby has announced the release of the fifty-eighth maintenance build of the long-term supported Linux 3.12 kernel series, as well as a modification to its EOL status.
Linux kernel 3.12.58 LTS is now available, and those running it on their Linux kernel-based operating system must update as soon as possible. And the good news is that the Linux 3.12 branch is here to stay for one more year, until 2017, because SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 12 Service Pack 1 is based on it.
"Since SLE12-SP1 is based upon 3.12 and its EOL is in 2017, move the EOL of 3.12 to 2017 too," said Jiri Slaby in a patch announcement sent to one of Linux kernel's mailing lists, where he has also revealed the "end of life" statuses for other kernel branches, such as August 2016 for Linux 3.14, January 2017 for Linux 3.18, or September 2017 for Linux 4.1.
What's new in Linux kernel 3.12.58 LTS
If you're wondering what's new in Linux kernel 3.12.58 LTS, we can tell you that, according to the appended shortlog, it is a pretty healthy update that changes a total of 114 files, with 835 insertions and 298 deletions. Among the changes, we can notice the usual sound and networking stack improvements, and many updated drivers.
There are also multiple improvements to the x86 hardware architecture, along with small fixes for the Xtensa and s390 ones. Filesystems like NFS, OCFS2, Btrfs, JBD2, and XFS have also received various fixes, and among the updated drivers, we can mention USB, Xen, MD, MTD, media, SCSI, TTY, networking, ATA, Bluetooth, hwmon, EDAC, and CPUFreq.
As usual, you can download the Linux kernel 3.12.58 LTS sources right now via our website or directly from kernel.org. Please update your GNU/Linux operating system as soon as possible if it is powered by a kernel from the Linux 3.12 series.