14 DAY TRIAL // After informing us about the availability of the Linux 4.8.16 kernel update a few days ago, Greg Kroah-Hartman announced earlier today the availability of a new maintenance update, which appears to be the last in the stable series.
It was bound to happen sooner or later, especially now that the Linux 4.9 kernel series has been officially declared stable and ready for deployment in production environments, so we're sad to inform you that there won't be any updates to the Linux 4.8 kernel branch. The last point release is now Linux kernel 4.8.17.
Greg Kroah-Hartman urges OS vendors to move their users to the new Linux 4.9 kernel stable series, which received its second maintenance update today. Linux kernel 4.9.2 brings lots of updated graphics drivers and many other improvements for several of the supported architectures, filesystems, and networking drivers.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.8.17 kernel. Note, this is the LAST 4.8-stable kernel to be released. This tree is now end-of-life. Please move to the 4.9-stable tree. If there are any reasons preventing you from doing this, please let me know," said Greg Kroah-Hartman in the mailing list announcement.
Linux kernel 4.8.17 is now available for download
Linux kernel 4.8.17 ships with the same changes as its bigger brother, Linux kernel 4.9.2, and you can download the source archive right now from our website, but considering the fact that this is the last update in the series, you should consider fetching the latest Linux 4.9 kernel instead and compiling it for your architecture.
Check out the appended shortlog (link above) if you're curious to know what exactly was implemented in the Linux 4.8.17 kernel, and you can also browse the updated 4.8.y git tree at the normal kernel.org git web browser http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=summary.
Distributions like Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), which are long-term supported and ship with a kernel from the Linux 4.8 series, will need to continue offering support to this branch for their users, which Canonical usually does when the kernel reaches end of life. Unfortunately, there won't be a Linux 4.9 kernel for Xenial anytime soon.