A new version of the Linux kernel is out

Mar 4, 2016 10:11 GMT  ·  By

The latest version of the stable Linux kernel, 4.4.4, has been revealed today by Greg Kroah-Hartman, which makes it the most advanced stable version available.

Even if the official website of the Linux kernel hasn't been updated with this information, the Linux kernel 4.4 branch is an LTS one. It's nice to see from time to time an LTS version of the kernel that also happens to be the most advanced out there.

This will only be true for a few days because Linux is preparing to launch the new Linux kernel 4.5. Still, Linux kernel 4.4.x has already been implemented in a large number of distributions, and very few of them will choose to switch to a non-LTS version. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing for how long a particular LTS version will be supported.

What's new in Linux kernel 4.4.4

“I'm announcing the release of the 4.4.4 kernel. All users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade. 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,” said Greg Kroah-Hartman in his regular mailing list update.

Linux kernel 4.4 has brought a ton of improvements, including AMD Stoney support, the Raspberry Pi KMS driver, better Skylake support, and a lot more. This latest upgrade is also quite consistent, but it's more about fixes, driver updates, and quite a few file system improvements.

If you are using any of the versions released until now, you might consider an update to the latest version.

A complete list of changes in this branch of the kernel can be found in the official announcement. You can download Linux kernel 4.4.4 right now from Softpedia, but please keep in mind that this is the source package, and you will have to compile it.