All users of the Linux 4.10 kernel series need to update

Feb 26, 2017 22:00 GMT  ·  By

Well, that didn't take long, and it looks like the recently released Linux 4.10 kernel series just got its first point release today, Linux kernel 4.10.1, marking the branch as stable and ready for deployment in stable OSes.

Linux kernel 4.10.1 comes only one week after the release of Linux 4.10, which is now considered the most stable and advanced kernel available for any GNU/Linux distribution that wants to adopt it for their users, so you can imagine that the changes are quite small in number. According to the appended shortlog, a total of 21 files were changed in this first point release, with 259 insertions and 52 deletions.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.10.1 kernel. All users of the 4.10 kernel series must upgrade. The updated 4.10.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.10.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," said Greg Kroah-Hartman.

Updated USB drivers, minor networking changes

Taking a look at the changes implemented in the Linux 4.10.1 kernel, we can notice that it includes mostly updated USB drivers for the mos7840, ftdi_sio, spcp8x5, opticon, cp210x, and ark3116 serial drivers. A fix is also available for the rtlwifi wireless driver, as well as for the TTY MSM serial driver to address an issue with the module autoload. For the XFS file system, Linux 4.10.1 clears cache and delalloc on buffered write failure.

The rest is comprised of just some minor networking improvements, for things like IPv4 and Netfilter, and a few core kernel changes related to ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface). However, what's important here is the fact that Linux kernel 4.10 is now officially ready for production use, and we recommend all OS vendors to download the Linux 4.10.1 tarball from kernel.org or via our website, compile and tweak it for their supported architectures, and push it to the stable repos for users to update.