14 DAY TRIAL // Today, June 1, 2016, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has had the great pleasure of releasing the first maintenance version of the Linux 4.6 kernel.
Believe it or not, Linux kernel 4.6.1 is already here, only two weeks after the official launch of the Linux 4.6 kernel series, as announced by Linus Torvalds on May 15, 2016.
For those not in the loop, Linux 4.6 branch is the latest and most advanced kernel branch available right now for GNU/Linux operating systems, but it looks like its adoption is a little slow at the moment.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.6.1 kernel. All users of the 4.6 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.6.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."
Here's what's new in Linux kernel 4.6.1
Looking at the diff from Linux kernel 4.6, we can notice that a lot of stuff has been implemented during the past two weeks, and it appears that Linux kernel 4.6.1 is a beefy update that changes a total of 119 files, with 1,353 insertions and 547 deletions.
From the appended shortlog, we can notice multiple fixes for the ARM64 (AArch64), x86, MIPS, PowerPC (PPC), and ARM hardware architectures, along with improvements to the Btrfs, CIFS, F2FS, HPFS, and NFS filesystems.
There are also many updated drivers, this time for things like ACPI, Bluetooth, CLK, crypto, InfiniBand, IRQ Chip, MCB, MD, MFD, MMC, MTD, NFC, TTY, SCSI, USB, Watchdog, Thunderbolt, and networking.
A few core kernel improvements are present as well, so please take a look at the changelog if you're curious to know what exactly has been fixed. In the meantime, you can download the Linux kernel 4.6.1 sources right now via our site or from kernel.org .
We would recommend you to update to Linux kernel 4.6.1 as soon as possible, but considering the fact that not so many stable distros are using a kernel from the Linux 4.6 series, it is best to wait for them to adopt it first and not compile the kernel yourself.