All users of the Linux 4.7 kernel branch are urged to update

Oct 9, 2016 21:50 GMT  ·  By

After announcing the imminent release of Linux kernel 4.8.1, as well as the availability of Linux kernel 4.4.24 LTS, Greg Kroah-Hartman has informed the community about the launch of the seventh maintenance update to the Linux 4.7 kernel series.

That's right, Linux kernel 4.7.7 is now here for those of you who are still using the Linux 4.7 kernel branch in your GNU/Linux distributions, and according to the appended shortlog and the diff from the previous maintenance update, namely Linux kernel 4.7.6, the new version changes a total of 142 files, with 852 insertions and 490 deletions, which means that it's a pretty hefty release.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.7.7 kernel. All users of the 4.7 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.7.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.7.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."

Here's what's new in Linux kernel 4.7.7

As mentioned before, Linux kernel 4.7.7 comes with many improvements, including a large number of updated wireless drivers (Broadcom, Intel, Marvell), as well as enhancements for Ethernet (Intel), InfiniBand, MMC, MTD, MD, GPU (Radeon, Nouveau), DMA, I2C, GPIO, hwmon, IRQ Chip, NFC, PCMCIA, PINCTRL, SCSI, USB, and Watchdog. It also adds minor enhancements to the NFS and Ceph filesystems.

Moreover, the Linux 4.7.7 kernel brings an updated networking stack with B.A.T.M.A.N. Advanced, Bluetooth, mac80211, and SunRPC changes, an updated sound stack with Intel Skylake, HDA, and OMAP improvements, various fixes to the ARM, ARM64 (AArch64), AVR32, MIPS, PowerPC (PPC), x86, and Tile hardware architectures, as well as the usual core kernel and mm bugfixes.

If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.7 series, you are urged to update to Linux kernel 4.7.7 as soon as possible. OS vendors and kernel maintainers can download the sources of the Linux 4.7.7 kernel right now via our website or directly from kernel.org. The rest of the world should wait for the new version to land in the stable repositories before updating.