Linux kernel 4.12.1 is now available for download

Jul 13, 2017 20:48 GMT  ·  By

Ten days after it has been unveiled by Linus Torvalds, the Linux 4.12 kernel just received its first point release, as announced a few hours ago by Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman.

You're reading it right, Linux kernel 4.12.1 is here, which means that the Linux 4.12 kernel series is now ready for production use, and OS vendors can start downloading the source tarballs, compile it for their supported hardware architectures, do some testing to see if everything works well, and then push the update to the software repositories for users to update their installations.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.12.1 kernel. All users of the 4.12 kernel series must upgrade. The updated 4.12.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.12.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," said Greg Kroah-Hartman.

Linux kernel 4.12.1 is a small update

Unfortunately, the Linux 4.12.1 kernel is a small update that only updates several USB drivers, as well as a Xen and Infiniband one, adds a couple of fixes for the x86 and PowerPC (PPC) hardware architectures, as well as for the Global File System 2 (GFS2) file system, and the usual core kernel changes. In numbers, Linux kernel 4.12.1 changes a total of 30 files, with 291 insertions and 254 deletions.

Again, the Linux 4.12 kernel series is now marked as "stable" on the kernel.org website, from where you can also download the source tarball if you fancy compiling your own kernel, which means that you can start using it on your favorite GNU/Linux distribution. Linux 4.12 is not and won't be an LTS (Long-Term Support) release, but it's the most advanced kernel available on the market.