14 DAY TRIAL // Today, November 15, 2016, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of the eighth maintenance update to the Linux 4.8 kernel series.
On November 10, we reported on the availability of the Linux 4.8.7 kernel, which brought updates to the Radeon open-source graphics drivers and many other improvements, and it now looks like Linux kernel 4.8.8 is already out, less than a week after the previous update. It's not a major release, though, as it only changes a total of 49 files, with 368 insertions and 217 deletions.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.8.8 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."
Mostly networking improvements and updated drivers
According to the diff from Linux kernel 4.8.7 and today's appended shortlog, the Linux 4.8.8 kernel patch is here to update the networking stack with various IPv4, IPv6, packet scheduler, Netlink, Ethernet, IEEE 802.1Q, Bridge, Switchdev, and Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) changes, as well as to update InfiniBand, Ethernet (Mellanox and Freescale), PTP, SCSI, and USB drivers.
If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.8 series, which is currently the most advanced stable branch you can install on a Linux-based operating system, you are urged to upgrade to Linux kernel 4.8.8 as soon as possible. OS vendors are also urged to download the Linux kernel 4.8.8 source archive from kernel.org and compile/tweak it for their supported platforms.