All users of Linux 4.4 LTS are urged to update

Sep 26, 2016 21:20 GMT  ·  By

Immediately after announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.7.5, renowned kernel developer and maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman informed the community about the availability of Linux kernel 4.4.22 LTS.

Linux kernel 4.4.22 LTS is the twenty-second maintenance update of the long-term supported Linux 4.4 kernel series, which is currently used in several top-notch GNU/Linux operating systems, including the popular Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus). According to the diff from the previous release, Linux kernel 4.4.21 LTS, and the appended shortlog, Linux kernel 4.4.22 LTS is here to change a total of 132 files, with 886 insertions and 449 deletions.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.4.22 kernel. All users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman in the release announcement. "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."

Updated drivers, ARM improvements, and much more

The Linux kernel 4.4.22 LTS patch contains various architecture improvements, in particular for ARM, AArch64 (ARM64), Alpha, ARC, AVR32, Blackfin, CRIS, FR-V, Hexagon, IA64, M32R, METAg, MicroBlaze, MIPS, MN10300, Nios II, OpenRISC, PA-RISC, PowerPC (PPC), s390, SH, SPARC, and x86, as well as fixes to the EXT4, Btrfs, F2FS, FUSE, NFS, and kernfs filesystems.

The networking stack received small improvements to the IPv6 and TIPC (Transparent Inter-process Communication) protocols, there are several core kernel enhancements, and it looks like the rest are updated drivers, this time for USB, TTY, GPU (mostly Intel i915)., PINCTRL, Ethernet, IRQ Chip, MMC, MD, LightNVM, InfiniBand, Clocksource, BUS, and iiO devices.

Therefore, 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 as soon as possible to version 4.4.22, which should be available in the stable repositories of your distribution in the coming days. OS vendors and kernel package maintainers are urged to download the Linux kernel 4.4.22 LTS sources right now from kernel.org or via our website.