All users of the Linux 4.2 kernel series must update

Nov 10, 2015 04:23 GMT  ·  By

Immediately after announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.1.13 LTS, Linux kernel 3.14.57 LTS, and Linux kernel 3.10.93 LTS, Greg Kroah-Hartman published details about the sixth maintenance version of the Linux 4.2 kernel series, and looking at the appended shortlog, it is a pretty important one.

According to the diff from Linux kernel 4.2.5, the new maintenance release is here to add various improvements to the ARM, ARM64, PowerPC (PPC), and x86 hardware architectures. Moreover, it fixes several issues in the Btrfs and OverlayFS filesystems, repairs a couple of networking problems, mostly related to mac80211 and Netfilter, as well as to adds a few mm and sound enhancements.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.2.6 kernel. All users of the 4.2 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "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."

Drivers, lots of updated drivers

Besides the changes mentioned above, Linux kernel 4.2.6 updates numerous drivers, especially for things like GPU (AMD, Intel i915, Nouveau, Radeon, and vmwgfx), BUS, CLK, CPUFreq, EDAC, I2C, iiO, InfiniBand, IOMMU, IRQ chip, MD-RAID, DVB, MMC, networking (mostly Wireless), PCI, PINCTRL, SCSI, thermal, TTY, USB, and video.

If you're running a GNU/Linux operating system powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.2 series, it is strongly recommended that you update to Linux kernel 4.2.6 as soon as possible, or more precisely as soon as the new maintenance version arrives in the default software repositories of your distribution.

Linux OS vendors and maintainers as well as experienced users who know how to compile a kernel by hand can download the Linux kernel 4.2.6 sources right now from either Softpedia or the kernel.org website and start the upgrade process immediately.