All users of the Linux 4.2 kernel series must update

Oct 27, 2015 04:20 GMT  ·  By

Only four days since the release of Linux kernel 4.2.4, Greg Kroah-Hartman announced in the last hours of October 26, 2015, the immediate availability for download of the fifth maintenance release of Linux kernel 4.2.

We have to admit that we were certain of the fact that this would be a very small release with some critical fixes, but looking at the appended shortlog, we can notice quite a few changes in Linux kernel 4.2.5, which is now the most advanced stable branch of the Linux kernel project, the core component of any GNU/Linux operating system. In numbers, this version changes 64 files with 465 insertions and 312 deletions.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.2.5 kernel. All users of the 4.2 kernel series must upgrade," said Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.2.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.2.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 4.2.5

Most of the changes in Linux kernel 4.2.5 are GPU updates, mainly for AMD graphics cards, but there's also a fix for Nouveau, the open-source Nvidia graphics driver. Additionally, we can also notice improvements to the ARM, ARM64, SPARC, and x86 hardware architectures, as well as to the Btrfs and NFS filesystems, and various other updated drivers, especially for things like I2C, MD, MFD, PINCTRL, and networking.

Talking about networking, Linux kernel 4.2.5 has a few networking (non-drive related) changes, especially for things like Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA), IPv6, IPv4, Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), Netlink, Open vSwitch, SunRPC, and Transparent Inter-process Communication (TIPC). Download Linux kernel 4.2.5 right now via Softpedia or from the kernel.org website. Users of Linux 4.2 kernel series are urged to update as soon as possible.