All users of the Linux 4.8 kernel series must update

Nov 27, 2016 23:00 GMT  ·  By

The Thanksgiving weekend brought us two new point releases for the stable Linux 4.8 and long-term supported Linux 4.4 kernels. Linux kernel 4.8.11 arrived on November 26, 2016, and it's now considered the most advanced stable version.

Linux kernel 4.8.11 arrives only five days after the Linux 4.8.10 maintenance update, and according to the appended shortlog and the diff since the previous patch, it changes a total of 77 files, with 595 insertions and 238 deletions. It's not a massive update, as you can imagine, and the biggest part of the patch is driver updates, with the rest spread out between architectures, filesystems, networking, and sound.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.8.11 kernel. All users of the 4.8 kernel series must upgrade," said Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.8.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.8.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."

InfiniBand, Wireless, and AMDGPU driver updates stand out

As mentioned before, driver updates stand out in Linux kernel 4.8.11, mostly for things like AMDGPU, InfiniBand (hfi1, mlx4, mlx5, rdmavt, rxe), Wireless (iwlwifi), UWB, RTC, MFD, I2C, GPIO, CLK, and Crypto. Moreover, there are small improvements to ARM, ARM64 (AArch64), PowerPC (PPC), and x86 architecture support, and a couple of EXT4 fixes.

The networking and sound stacks have seen some enhancements as well, with changes for Netfilter, SunRPC, and ALSA. If you're running a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.8 series, you are urged to update to version 4.8.11 as soon as possible, or as soon as it lands in the stable repositories of your favorite distro. OS vendors are urged to download Linux kernel 4.8.11 from kernel.org.