14 DAY TRIAL // As of this morning, April 14, 2016, the famous Arch Linux operating system has received a major kernel upgrade, Linux 4.5, which users can now install via the official channels.
Dubbed "Blurry Fish Butt," Linux kernel 4.5 was officially released exactly one month ago, on March 14, and it has been in the Testing repos of Arch Linux for quite some time now. Until today, Arch Linux was powered by Linux 4.4.5, which wasn't quite the latest version of the long-term supported kernel.
So it looks to us like the maintainers of the Arch Linux operating system were so concentrated on migrating the OS to the latest and most advanced Linux kernel branch, version 4.5, that they didn't even bother to upgrade to Linux kernel 4.4.6 LTS or Linux kernel 4.4.7 LTS.
But the good news is that Linux kernel 4.5 is finally here, replacing the previous Linux kernel 4.4.5 LTS version for all existing users or the rolling operating system. Therefore, if you're using Arch Linux, we strongly recommend that you upgrade your installation right now by running the "sudo pacman -Syu" command in a terminal window.
Linux kernel 4.5.1 is coming soon too
If you're wondering what you'll get after upgrading your Arch Linux box to Linux kernel 4.5, we can tell you that there will be better support for AMD Radeon GPUs thanks to the implementation of support for the AMD PowerPlay power management technology and high-performance to the AMDGPU open-source driver.
Those who use the Btrfs file system should know that Linux kernel 4.5 adds scalability improvements in the free space handling. A couple of days ago, the Linux 4.5 kernel branch got its first point release, version 4.5.1, so it should arrive in the Arch Linux repositories soon enough.