The Linux 4.7 kernel branch has reached end of life

Oct 23, 2016 23:05 GMT  ·  By

After releasing the Linux kernel 4.8.4 and Linux kernel 4.4.27 LTS updates to users, kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman also announced the availability of Linux kernel 4.7.10, which appears to be the last in the series.

Yes, you're reading that right, the Linux 4.7 kernel branch officially reached end of life, and it has already been marked as EOL on the kernel.org website, which means that the Linux kernel 4.7.10 maintenance update is the last one that will be released for this branch. It also means that you need to either update your system to Linux kernel 4.7.10 or move to a more recent stable kernel branch, such as Linux 4.8.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.7.10 kernel. All users of the 4.7 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman in the release announcement. "Note, this is the LAST 4.7.y stable kernel to be released, it is now end-of-life, please use 4.8.y instead at this point in time. The updated 4.7.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."

Btrfs and EXT4 improvements, updated wireless drivers

If you're still curious what's new in Linux kernel 4.7.10, we can tell you right now that it adds various improvements to the EXT4, Btrfs, Debugfs, FUSE, and ReiserFS filesystems, a couple of changes to the ARC architecture and to the cryptography framework, and multiple updated drivers, in particular for Broadcom b43 and brcm80211 wireless drivers, as well as InfiniBand, CLK, SCSI, and TTY devices.

According to the appended shortlog and the diff from Linux kernel 4.7.9, which was patched a couple of days ago against the nasty "Dirty COW" bug, Linux kernel 4.7.10 includes a total of 49 changed files, with 411 insertions and only 172 deletions. If you don't want to migrate to the Linux 4.8 kernel branch just yet, which we recommend you do, you can download the Linux kernel 4.7.10 sources right now from kernel.org or via our website. Either way, users are urged to update their systems as soon as possible.