All users of the Linux 3.18 LTS kernel must update

Jan 27, 2016 23:10 GMT  ·  By

After the release of the Linux 4.3.4, 4.1.16 LTS, 3.14.59 LTS and 3.10.95 LTS kernels, today we would like to inform our readers about the immediate availability for download of the long-term supported Linux kernel 3.18.26.

Sasha Levin is in charge of the maintenance of the Linux 3.18 LTS kernel series, and he reports on January 26, 2016, that the twenty-sixth maintenance release is available for GNU/Linux users who run operating systems powered by kernel packages from the respective branch. However, looking at the diff from Linux kernel 3.18.25 LTS, we can notice that Linux kernel 3.18.26 LTS is a quite small release that changes 56 files, with 585 insertions and 163 deletions.

"I'm announcing the release of the 3.18.26 kernel. All users of the 3.18 kernel series must upgrade," said Sasha Levin in the release announcement published on the kernel mailing list. "The updated 3.18.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.18.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."

What's new in Linux kernel 3.18.26 LTS

For the tech-savvy users, we can report today that Linux kernel 3.18.26 LTS brings updates to the networking stack, especially for things like IPv6, IPv4, IrDA, Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), DECnet, and Bluetooth. There are also improvements to the Btrfs, NFS, Ceph, JBD2, EXT4, and OCFS2 filesystems, an HDA HDMI sound patch, a few security fixes, as well as updated network, FireWire and USB drivers.

We strongly recommend that you update to the Linux kernel 3.18.26 LTS release as soon as possible if you're running a Linux kernel-based operating system powered by a kernel from the Linux 3.18 LTS series. To update, you need to check the main software repositories of your distribution, or download the Linux kernel 3.18.26 LTS sources from the kernel.org website or via Softpedia and start compiling by hand.