14 DAY TRIAL // Today, October 28, 2016, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman informed the community about the immediate availability for download of the Linux 4.8.5 kernel maintenance release.
Linux kernel 4.8.5 is here less than a week after the announcement of the fourth maintenance update to the Linux 4.8 kernel series, which is currently the most stable and advanced you can get for a GNU/Linux distribution, and according to the appended shortlog and the diff from the previous release, it's a pretty big one, changing a total of 152 files, with 1416 insertions and 612 deletions.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.8.5 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."
AArch64, PPC, and CIFS improvements, lots of updated drivers
Taking a quick look at the changes implemented in the Linux 4.8.5 kernel update, we can notice that there are multiple improvements to the ARM64 (AArch64), PowerPC (PPC), and x86 hardware architectures, along with minor changes to MIPS, PA-RISC, ARC, s390, and METAg. There are also numerous enhancements to the CIFS file system, as well as to NFS, Ceph, ISOFS, JBD2, OverlayFS, and CryptoFS.
Of course, there's no kernel release without some updated drivers, and it looks like Linux kernel 4.8.5 has plenty, especially in the s390, SCSI, MMC, MTD, Wireless (ath10k), PINCTRL, PCI, Watchdog, GPIO, MD, InfiniBand, CLK, and CPUFreq areas. If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.8 series, we recommend updating to version 4.8.5 as soon as possible. OS vendors are urged to download the Linux kernel 4.8.5 sources right now from kernel.org or via our website.