14 DAY TRIAL // Today, December 18, 2016, Linux kernel maintainer Jiri Slaby announced the release of the sixty-ninth maintenance update of the long-term supported Linux 3.12 kernel series, which will be maintained until 2017.
The Linux 3.12 kernel branch was supposed to reach end of life in spring this year, but it's used in the SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 12 Service Pack 1 (SP1) operating system, which is supported with security and software updates until 2017. As such, Jiri Slaby decided to move the EOL status of Linux kernel 3.12 to 2017 too, and the latest release, Linux kernel 3.12.69 LTS, changes a total of 48 files, with 414 insertions and 162 deletions.
"I'm announcing the release of the 3.12.69 kernel. All users of the 3.12 kernel series must upgrade," said Jiri Slaby. "The updated 3.12.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.12.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."
There are mostly networking (core and drivers) changes
Looking at the appended shortlog and the diff since Linux kernel 3.12.68 LTS, we can't help but notice that the most important change in the Linux 3.12.69 LTS kernel release is an updated networking stack that adds various fixes to the IPv4, IPv6, Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP), Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), packet scheduler, and wireless components. It also updates the Marvell Ethernet drivers, as well as the Macvtap, Virtio, TUN, and mwifiex ones.
Other than that, Linux kernel 3.12.69 LTS brings minor changes to the SPARC, Tile, and x86 hardware architectures, updates the open-source Radeon graphics driver to ensure the enablement of the vblank interrupt when the DPMS transition is on and fix an AtomBIOS issue, as well as update the I2C, MTD, PCI, PWM, SCSI, and many of the supported USB drivers. An AppArmor bug was patched too.
If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the long-term supported Linux 3.12 series, you are urged to update as soon as possible to version 3.12.69. OS vendors and power users are also urged to download the source archive of Linux kernel 3.12.69 LTS right now from kernel.org or via our website if they want to install it on their operating systems.