14 DAY TRIAL // Immediately after announcing on the 20th of November 2016 the release of Linux kernel 3.2.84 LTS, maintainer Ben Hutchings also informed the community about the availability of the Linux 3.16.39 LTS kernel update.
Just like Linux kernel 3.2.84 LTS, the Linux kernel 3.16.39 LTS release arrives exactly one month after the previous maintenance update, namely Linux kernel 3.16.38 LTS, which was patched against the "Dirty COW" vulnerability. And it now looks like the long-term supported Linux 3.16 kernel series just got a massive patch that changes a total of 420 files, with 3506 insertions and 1566 deletions.
"I'm announcing the release of the 3.16.39 kernel. All users of the 3.16 kernel series should upgrade," said Ben Hutchings. "The updated 3.16.y git tree can be found at: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.16.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git."
Here's what's changed in Linux kernel 3.16.39 LTS
Looking at the diff since Linux kernel 3.16.38 LTS and the appended shortlog, we can notice that Linux kernel 3.16.39 LTS adds a little bit of everything. For example, there are multiple improvements for ARM and ARM64 (AArch64) architectures, but also for Alpha, ARC, AVR32, Blackfin, CRIS, Hexagon, F-RV, IA-64, M32R, MetaG, MicroBlaze, MIPS, MN10300, OpenRISC, PA-RISC, PowerPC, s390, SH, SPARC, Tile, and x86. Then, there are small Crypto, KVM, mm, and core kernel changes.
The list of improvements continues with lots of changes for most of the supported filesystems, including but not limited to 9p, Advanced Disc Filing System (ADFS), Amiga Fast File System (AFFS), Btrfs, Ceph, CIFS, EXOFS, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, F2FS, FAT, FUSE, GFS2, HFS, HFS+, HostFS, HPFS, HugeTLBfs, JFFS2, JFS, kernfs, LogFS, NCPFS, NFS, NILFS2, NTFS, OCFS2, OMFS, RAMFS, ReiserFS, UBIFS, UDF, UFS, and XFS. The networking and sound stacks have received many changes as well.
Therefore, if you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the long-term supported Linux 3.16 kernel series, you are urged to update to the Linux kernel 3.16.39 LTS release as soon as possible. The improvements included in this patch can't be ignored, and OS vendors should download the Linux kernel 3.16.39 LTS source archive right now from kernel.org or through our web portal and compile/tweak the new version for their supported architectures.