The mac80211 drivers received some improvements

Mar 16, 2016 21:02 GMT  ·  By

Just a few minutes ago, March 16, 2016, renowned kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman released three Linux kernel maintenance builds, Linux 4.4.6 LTS, Linux 3.14.65 LTS, and Linux 3.10.101 LTS.

In this article, we would like to share with our readers some of the improvements introduced in the Linux kernel 4.4.6 release, the sixth maintenance build of the long-term supported Linux 4.4 series, and according to the diff from Linux kernel 4.4.5, which was announced just a week ago, it brings some significant changes.

In numbers, Linux kernel 4.4.6 LTS changes a total of 65 files, with 466 insertions and 164 deletions, which means that is a fairly normal release, bringing multiple updates to the ARM, PowerPC (PPC), ARM64, MIPS, s390, and x86 hardware architectures, a fix for the AMDGPU driver, and various improvements to the Radeon ones.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.4.6 kernel. All users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade," said Greg Kroah-Hartman in today's announcement. "The updated 4.4.y git tree 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."

OverlayFS improvements, networking stack updates

Besides the updated Radeon and ADMGPU drivers, or the architecture fixes, the sixth maintenance release of Linux kernel 4.4 LTS adds several improvements to the OverlayFS file system, along with small fixes to the JFFS2 and NCPFS filesystems, as well as an updated networking stack, patching issues for the mac80211 driver.

All in all, Linux kernel 4.4.6 LTS is a great release, especially for AMD Radeon GPU users, and it's a recommended update for everyone using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the long-term supported Linux 4.4 series, such as Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Arch Linux, Manjaro, Solus, and many others.

Download Linux kernel 4.4.6 LTS right now via Softpedia or directly from kernel.org.

Update: Ikey Doherty of the Solus Project has just informed Softpedia about the availability of Linux kernel 4.4.6 LTS in the software repositories of the Solus 1.1 Shannon operating system, along with some minor fixes to the drivers, ensuring Nouveau is permanently blacklisted from the initramfs, as well as several stateless changes (example: /etc/shell is now gone, /etc/lsb-release, etc.).