14 DAY TRIAL // After the release of the long-term supported Linux 4.4.3, Linux 3.10.98, Linux 3.14.62, and Linux 3.2.78 kernels, we are now informing you of the debut of Linux kernel 3.12.55 LTS.
Looking at the diff from the fifty-fourth maintenance release of the Linux 3.12 LTS (Long Term Support) series, we can notice that Linux kernel 3.12.55 LTS has quite some changes, especially updated drivers, in particular for things like ATA, iiO, IOMMU, V4L2 (Video4Linux), MTD, Wireless, remoteproc, SCSI, SPI, iSCSI, TTY, and USB. In numbers, it changes a total of 144 files, with 1661 insertions and 541 deletions.
However, updated drivers are not the only thing that has landed in the fifty-fifth maintenance build of the long-term supported Linux 3.12 kernel series. In fact, filesystems like Btrfs, CIFS, devpts, EXT4, FAT, FUSE, JBD2, XFS, UDF, NFS, sysv, procfs, and OCFS2 have also received improvements, along with multiple sound and core kernel enhancements.
"I'm announcing the release of the 3.12.55 kernel. All users of the 3.12 kernel series must upgrade," says Jiri Slaby. "The updated 3.12.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.12.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."
Several hardware architectures have been updated
In addition to the updated drivers, sound, core kernel and filesystems improvements, Linux kernel also adds various fixes to the ARM, PA-RISC, m32r, s390, x86, and SH (SuperH) hardware architectures. So, as you can see, it is a pretty big maintenance release, which means that you need to update to it as soon as possible, or more precisely as soon as it arrives in the main software repositories of your distribution.
We are also urging all OS vendors who use kernel package from the Linux 3.12 LTS series in their GNU/Linux distributions to download, compile, and tweak the Linux kernel 3.12.55 LTS release for their operating systems, then push the new version to the repos for users to upgrade as quickly as possible. Download Linux kernel 3.12.55 LTS right now from the kernel.org website or via Softpedia.