14 DAY TRIAL // Today, September 7, 2016, renowned Linux kernel developer and maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of three new kernel versions, namely Linux kernel 4.7.3, Linux kernel 4.4.20 LTS, and Linux kernel 3.14.78 LTS.
In this article, we will tell you about the third maintenance update to the Linux 4.7 kernel series, which is the latest stable and most advanced kernel version that you can put in a GNU/Linux operating system, and according to the appended shortlog and the diff from the previous build, Linux kernel 4.7.2, the Linux 4.7.3 kernel is a beefy one bringing changes to a total of 141 files, with 1,101 insertions and 539 deletions.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.7.3 kernel. All users of the 4.7 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.7.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.7.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."
AMDGPU, Intel i915, and Btrfs improvements, many updated drivers
Looking at the changelog, we can notice that Linux kernel 4.7.3 comes with several improvements to the Btrfs file system, many updated drivers, in particular for things like AMDGPU, Intel i915, hwmon, I2C, iiO, IOMMU, MD, PCI, PINCTRL, s390, USB, SCSI, VFIO, Virtio, GPIO, EDAC, DAX, DMA, ACPI, CLK, and Crypto, as well as some enhancements to the ARC, ARM64 (AArch64), PA-RISC, and x86 hardware architectures.
Last but not least, the networking and sound stacks have been improved as well, with support for new sound devices, as well as various changes to the mac80211 wireless framework and SunRPC protocol. If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.7 series, we recommend that you update to Linux kernel 4.7.3 as soon as possible. The sources are available for download right now via our website or from kernel.org.