14 DAY TRIAL // Two days after announcing the release of the Linux 4.8 kernel as the latest stable and most advanced kernel branch for GNU/Linux operating systems, Linus Torvalds apologizes on the kernel mailing list for the inclusion of bug.
According to Mr. Torvalds, the bug was left in the last RC8 (Release Candidate 8) build by kernel developer Andrew Morton, and caused problems when attempting to compile it, thus resulting in a dead kernel. If you're curious, the full report is attached to Linus Torvalds' mailing list announcement.
"I'm really sorry I applied that last series from Andrew just before doing the 4.8 release, because they cause problems, and now it is in 4.8 (and that buggy crap is marked for stable too)," says Linus Torvalds. "This went in very late in the release candidates, and I had higher expectations of things coming in through Andrew."
Linux kernel 4.8.1 should be out shortly to patch the bug
However, this should not worry anyone simply because of the fact that there's no stable GNU/Linux distribution out there to switch to the new Linux 4.8 kernel series so fast, mainly because the first release is tagged as mainline, and it moves to stable once the first maintenance update is out, in this case Linux kernel 4.8.1.
So when Linux kernel 4.8.1 is released, which we believe will happen shortly after this announcement, OS vendors will be able to finally get it, compile and optimize it for their supported architectures, and push it to the stable channels for users to upgrade from the previous version they're currently using.
We remind you that Linux kernel 4.8 is shipping with various interesting features, such as AMDGPU OverDrive support, Microsoft Surface 3 touch controller support, experimental Nvidia Pascal support, ACPI Low-Power Idle support, ARM Mali display driver, as well as support for Raspberry Pi 3's BCM2837 system-on-chip (SoC).