14 DAY TRIAL // Greg Kroah-Hartman had the pleasure of announcing today, May 13, the immediate availability of three new kernel security updates, Linux kernel 4.0.3, Linux kernel 3.14.42 LTS, and Linux kernel 3.10.78 LTS.
The Linux 3.14 kernel, which is an LTS (Long Term Support) version supported with security patches for a few more years than regular kernels, got its forty-two maintenance release today, bringing updated drivers, especially for SCSI and USB devices, improvements to the EXT4 file system, as well as multiple sound enhancements.
"I'm announcing the release of the 3.14.42 kernel. All users of the 3.14 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman in the mailinglist announcement. "The updated 3.14.y git tree 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."
Highlights of Linux kernel 3.14.42 LTS
Looking at the appended changelog, we can notice that Linux kernel 3.14.42 LTS improves support for Sapphire R9 270 Dual-X 2G GDDR5 Radeon graphics cards, add better support for some USB printers, addresses a command completion race in multiple SCSI drivers, and adds a missing sk_nulls_node_init() function in ping_unhash() for the IPv4 network protocol.
Moreover, several USB drivers now use the new USB_RESUME_TIMEOUT option, it repairs leaking hwmon device in Compal laptops, addresses a data corruption caused by delayed and unwritten extents in the EXT4 file system, fixes a soft lockup in the ubi_check_volume() function, and addresses numerous issues in the ALSA driver.
Now, experienced Linux users who know how to compile a kernel can download Linux kernel 3.14.42 LTS right now via Softpedia or directly from the kernel.org website. Regular users should wait for their distribution vendors to update the kernel packages of the respective GNU/Linux operating system they're using.