14 DAY TRIAL // While Linux kernel 4.15 is yet to receive its first point release and become the new stable series, Greg Kroah-Hartman released today new maintenance updates of the Linux 4.14, 4.9, 4.4, and 3.18 kernel series.
Coming a week after the previous point releases, Linux kernels 4.14.16, 4.9.79, 4.4.114, and 3.18.93 are now available to download and promise to bring yet another layer of performance and security improvements. This time, there are fewer x86 changes and more driver updates and networking improvements.
According to the appended shortlogs, the Linux 4.14.16, 4.9.79, 4.4.114, and 3.18.93 kernels include lots of updated Ethernet drivers, mostly for Mellanox devices, but also for Realtek and Emulex, along with some PPP, TUN, IPv4, IPv6, DCCP, SCTP, TIPC, TLS, XFRM, VRF, VMXNET3 and Netfilter improvements.
Other updated drivers, OrangeFS and ReiserFS improvements
Apart from the numerous networking changes, there are various, yet smaller enhancements to the OrangeFS, ReiserFS, Btrfs, and NFS filesystems, some minor improvements to the s390, MIPS, UM, ARM, and ARM64 (AArch64) architectures, updates to the InfiniBand, ACPI, USB, SCSI, MMC, MD, GPU, and PHY drivers, and the usual mm and core kernel fixes.
In numbers, Linux kernel 4.14.16 changes 79 files, with 845 insertions and 440 deletions, Linux kernel 4.9.79 changes 84 files, with 525 insertions and 233 deletions, Linux kernel 4.4.114 changes 92 files, with 924 insertions and 365 deletions, and Linux kernel 3.18.93 changes 50 files, with 273 insertions and 116 deletions. You can download the sources right now from kernel.org.
As expected, Greg Kroah-Hartman urges all users of the Linux 4.14, 4.9, 4.4, and 3.18 kernel series to upgrade to these new point releases as soon as possible. On the other hand, the developer said earlier today that Linux systems running newer kernels aren't really affected by the recent KPTI patches implemented to mitigate the Meltdown security vulnerability.