14 DAY TRIAL // Immediately after informing the community about the release of Linux kernel 4.8.7, which is now the most advanced kernel you can get for a GNU/Linux distribution, Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the availability of Linux kernel 4.4.31 LTS.
Linux kernel 4.4.31 LTS is here a little over a week after the release of Linux kernel 4.4.30 LTS, which patched a bug in Linux kernel 4.4.29 LTS and older versions. It's a modest point release that changes a total of 67 files, with 384 insertions and 185 deletions, according to the appended shortlog and the diff from the previous maintenance update.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.4.31 kernel. All users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade," said 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."
Linux kernel 4.4.31 LTS is a recommended update for all users
Among the changes included in today's Linux kernel 4.4.31 LTS release, we can notice an updated sound stack that brings mostly Intel HDA improvements, minor fixes to the Btrfs, XFS, UBIFS, and OverlayFS filesystems, some x86, h8300, ARM, PA-RISC, MIPS, and PowerPC (PPC) enhancements, and a large number of updated drivers, in particular for GPU (mostly Radeon), Android, FireWire, HID, HV, I2C, MD, MMC, MTD, PWM, SCSI, TTY, USB, and virtio devices.
Lastly, it appears that the networking stack has been updated as well, but the only change is that the multicast and 4-addr A-MSDUs were discarded for the mac80211 wireless framework. There are also the usual mm and perf changes, so we recommend all users of a GNU/Linux distro powered by a kernel from the long-term supported Linux 4.4 series to update at their earliest convenience. OS vendors can download Linux kernel 4.4.31 LTS right now from kernel.org or via our web portal.