14 DAY TRIAL // Immediately after informing us about the availability of Linux kernel 4.5.3 for select GNU/Linux operating systems, kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman posted details about the release of the ninth maintenance build in the long-term supported Linux 4.4 series.
Linux kernel 4.4.9 LTS is out now, and according to the appended shortlog, it's a pretty big update, changing a total of 176 files, with 1648 insertions and 691 deletions. Among the changes, we can notice various improvements to the ARM, ARM64 (AArch64), x86, s390, and PowerPC (PPC) hardware architectures, along with fixes for the EXT4 file system and lots of core kernel enhancements.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.4.9 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."
All users are urged to update as soon as possible
Linux kernel 4.4.9 LTS also includes updated drivers for things like CPUFreq, Crypto, DMA, EDAC, External Connector Class (extcon), EFI, GPU (many AMDGPU and Radeon changes, but also Intel i915 and Nouveau improvements), hwtracing, I2C, InfiniBand, IOMMU, IRQ Chip, Video4Linux (V4L2), MD, MTD, networking (mostly iwlwifi), PINCTRL (PIN CONTROL), PWM, regulator, RTC, SPI, SCSI, TTY, thermal, Linux framebuffer (fbdev), and USB.
Numerous GNU/Linux distributions are currently using a kernel from the long-term supported Linux 4.4 series, including the popular Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) and Solus Linux 1.1, so it is recommended that you update your installations to Linux kernel 4.4.9 LTS as soon as it lands in the main stable repos of the respective OS. Advanced users can download the Linux kernel 4.4.9 LTS sources via our website or directly from kernel.org and start compiling/tweaking it.