14 DAY TRIAL // After announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.8.1, Greg Kroah-Hartman had the pleasure of informing the community about the release of the twenty-fourth maintenance update to the Linux 4.4 LTS series.
Linux 4.4 LTS is a long-term supported kernel branch, used by some of the most stable GNU/Linux distributions, including Alpine Linux 3.4, Linux Lite 3, and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), and it will receive point releases that bring bug fixes and security patches, along with updated drivers for a few more years. Linux kernel 4.4.24 LTS is the latest build, and it comes just one week after the release of Linux kernel 4.4.23 LTS.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.4.24 kernel. All users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.4.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.4.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."
Here's what's new in Linux kernel 4.4.24 LTS
According to the appended shortlog and the diff from the previous maintenance release, Linux kernel 4.4.24 LTS includes various improvements to the ARM, MIPS, x86, ARM64 (AArch64), AVR32, and PowerPC (PPC) hardware architectures, as well as a large number of updated drivers, this time for InfiniBand, Wireless (ath9k, brcm80211, iwlwifi), Ethernet (Intel i40e), MTD, IRQ Chip, CLK, ACPI, DMA, GPIO, hwmon, MD, MMC, NFC, PINCTRL, SCSI, SPI, and USB devices.
Other than that, Linux kernel 4.4.24 LTS comes with minor improvements to the NFS and Ceph filesystems, an updated networking stack with B.A.T.M.A.N. Advanced, Netfilter, and SunRPC changes, and an updated sound stack with better support for Intel Skylake and OMAP devices. If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.4 LTS series, you are urged to update to Linux kernel 4.4.24 LTS as soon as possible. The sources are available for download from kernel.org.