14 DAY TRIAL // After announcing the release of the Linux 4.10.11, 4.9.23 LTS and 4.4.62 LTS kernels, Greg Kroah-Hartman also informed the community today, April 18, 2017, about the availability of the long-term supported Linux 3.18.49 kernel.
In early February this year, we announced that the Linux 3.18 kernel series reached end of life, but Linux kernel 3.18.49 is here now to add a bunch of improvements for the s390, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC (PPC), x86, and Xtensa architectures, as well as the XFS and FAT filesystems, and update numerous drivers (USB mostly, but also Bluetooth, GPU, HID, InfiniBand, IOMMU, MD, MTD, PWM, TTY, and SCSI).
The sound and networking stacks were updated as well, with Controller Area Network (CAN), Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP), IPv4, IPv6, Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), Logical Link Control (LLC), mac80211, Netlink, Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), XFRM, and packet scheduler changes. According to the appended shortlog, a total of 166 files were changed, with 3337 insertions and 3968 deletions.
Users are urged to update if they didn't move to a newer kernel
If you haven't already moved to a newer kernel branch, as Greg Kroah-Hartman himself recommended in early February when he announced the end of life of the Linux 3.18 series, suggesting users to upgrade to either the long-term supported Linux 4.9 or 4.4 kernels, you're now urged to update your systems to Linux kernel 3.18.49.
"I'm announcing the release of the 3.18.49 kernel. All users of the 3.18 kernel series must upgrade. 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," said Greg Kroah-Hartman.
Also, if you're wondering why there's a new maintenance update released for an EOL kernel branch, Greg Kroah-Hartman points you in the direction of the 3.19.49-rc1 release announcement. In the meantime, you can download the Linux kernel 3.18.49 source tarball right now from kernel.org or via our website if you want to compile and install the new patch on your Linux OS.