All users of the Linux 4.9 LTS kernel series need to update

Mar 22, 2017 23:25 GMT  ·  By

Immediately after announcing the release of the Linux 4.10.5 kernel, Greg Kroah-Hartman informed us about the immediate availability of the seventeenth maintenance update to the long-term supported Linux 4.9 kernel series.

Just like Linux kernel 4.10.5, the Linux 4.9.17 LTS kernel is here only four days after the previous maintenance release, in this case Linux kernel 4.9.16 LTS. But this one is a major release adding changes to a total of 112 files, with 1815 insertions and 1271 deletions, according to the appended shortlog. Therefore, it is recommended that you update your systems to the new version as soon as possible.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.9.17 kernel. All users of the 4.9 kernel series must upgrade. The updated 4.9.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.9.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, " said Greg Kroah-Hartman.

Nouveau updates, networking improvements

Among the changes included in the Linux 4.9.17 LTS kernel, we can notice lots of improvements to the Nouveau open-source graphics driver for Nvidia GPUs, along with various other fixes to the Ethernet (IBM, Intel, Mellanox), PCI, s390, SCSI, TTY, USB, VFIO, DMA, CLK, and ACPI drivers. Some issues were also resolved for the x86, PowerPC (PPC), and AArch64 (ARM64) architectures.

Besides the usual core kernel and mm changes, Linux kernel 4.9.17 LTS updates the networking stack with various improvements to things like IPv4, IPv6, Bridge, Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP), Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), Open vSwitch, StrParser, and the packet scheduler. You can download the Linux kernel 4.9.17 LTS source tarball right now from kernel.org.