It brings updates to the Btrfs and EXT filesystems

Dec 15, 2015 18:17 GMT  ·  By

Only five days after introducing Linux kernel 4.2.7, today renowned kernel maintainer and developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announces the end of life for the Linux 4.2 kernel series.

Linux kernel 4.2.8 is the eighth and last maintenance release in the series, but not an unnoticed one, as it adds quite an impressive number of changes. These vary from updated drivers, especially for things like Ethernet, Firewire, USB, PCI, and PHY, improvements to the Btrfs, EXT4, JBD2, and NFS filesystems, to numerous networking updates, mostly for things like IPv6, IPv4, Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), and scheduler, and some sound drivers enhancements.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.2.8 kernel. All users of the 4.2 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "NOTE: This is the LAST 4.2.y kernel to be released. It is now end-of-life. Please move to the 4.3.y kernel series at this time. The updated 4.2.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.2.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."

Please move to Linux kernel 4.3 as soon as possible

As expected, all GNU/Linux users are now urged to move as soon as possible to the Linux 4.3 kernel branch, which is the most advanced kernel release at the moment of writing this article. You can upgrade either by manually upgrading the kernel packages after downloading the Linux kernel 4.3.3 sources right now from our website or via the kernel.org website, or by upgrading the kernel packages from the default software repositories of their Linux kernel-based operating systems.

Of course, if you still want to stay on the Linux 4.2 kernel branch, you can do so by making sure that you have the Linux kernel 4.2.8 version released today, which you can also download from Softpedia or the kernel.org website. However, please note that it will no longer be supported with security patches and bugfixes. Ubuntu Linux users are the luckiest of the bunch, as Canonical has announced today that they will continue maintaining the Linux 4.2 kernel for the distribution.