14 DAY TRIAL // After announcing the release of the Linux 4.7.3 kernel, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has informed the community about the availability of the twentieth maintenance update to the Linux 4.4 LTS kernel series.
Linux 4.4 is currently the most advanced long-term supported kernel branch, until Linux kernel 4.9 takes over later in the year, and it is being used in very popular GNU/Linux operating systems, such as Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus). Therefore, it is imperative for it to receive security updates that patch several bugs and flaws discovered by various researchers and hackers.
As mentioned before, Linux kernel 4.4.20 LTS is the twentieth maintenance update in the series, and it's here only two weeks after the previous point release, namely Linux kernel 4.4.19 LTS. According to the appended shortlog and the diff from the Linux 4.4.19 kernel, Linux kernel 4.4.20 LTS changes a total of 119 files, with 845 insertions and 425 deletions.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.4.20 kernel. All users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.4.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.4.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."
Users are urged to update their systems as soon as possible
As for the changes, a summary of the patches included in Linux kernel 4.4.20 LTS will include many updated drivers (ACPI, AMDGPU, USB, SCSI, I2C, iiO, SCSI, EDAC, IOMMU, MMC, NVMe, PCI, PINCTRL, Virtio, VFIO, s390, GPIO, and DMA), Arch improvements (ARM64, ARC, UM, PowerPC, PA-RISC, and x86), filesystem changes (Btrfs and Sysfs), as well as updated networking (mac80211 and SunRPC) and sound stacks.
If you're using a GNU/Linux operating system powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.4 LTS series, you are urged to update to version 4.4.20 as soon as possible. Most probably, a kernel update will be available for your distro in the shortest possible time, so make sure that you check for updates regularly and install them immediately. Linux kernel 4.4.20 LTS sources are now available for download via our website or from kernel.org.