14 DAY TRIAL // After announcing the release and immediate availability for download of Linux kernel 4.2.5, Greg Kroah-Hartman informed Linux users about the debut of the twelfth maintenance version of Linux kernel 4.1 LTS.
Being a long-term supported branch, Linux kernel 4.1 will receive maintenance releases that include patches and security fixes for approximately two more years. According to the appended shortlog, Linux kernel 4.1.12 LTS comes only four days after the release of Linux kernel 4.1.11 LTS on October 22, 2015, and includes a little bit of everything (see below for details on that).
In numbers, there are 54 files changed, with 315 insertions and 189 deletions. Looking at the diff, we can notice that Linux kernel 4.1.12 LTS adds a few fixes to the ARM64, PowerPC (PPC), Sparc, and x86 hardware architectures and improves the AMD GPU drivers. Moreover, it updates several other drivers, especially for things like I2C, MD, MFD, PINCTRL, networking (Ethernet and PPPoE), and Xen.
"I'm announcing the release of the 4.1.12 kernel. All users of the 4.1 kernel series must upgrade," said Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.1.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.1.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 also networking and filesystems improvements
In addition to the architectures improvements and driver updates, Linux kernel 4.1.12 LTS adds multiple networking (non-driver) changes, especially for things like IPv4, Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), Netlink, Open vSwitch, Sun Remote Procedure Call Mechanism (SunRPC), and Transparent Inter-process Communication (TIPC), as well as various fixes to the Btrfs and NFS filesystems.
As always, we recommend all users of GNU/Linux distributions powered by Linux 4.1 LTS kernel to update to version 4.1.12 as soon as possible, or more precisely as soon as the Linux kernel 4.1.12 LTS update arrives in the default software repositories of the respective Linux kernel-based operating system. Download Linux kernel 4.1.12 LTS right now from Softpedia or directly from the kernel.org website.