All users of the Linux 4.9 kernel series must update

Mar 15, 2017 22:13 GMT  ·  By

Immediately after announcing the availability of Linux kernel 4.10.3, renowned Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman released the fifteenth maintenance update to the long-term supported Linux 4.9 kernel series.

That's right, we're talking about Linux kernel 4.9.15 LTS, which comes only three days after the release of the Linux 4.9.14 patch, which shipped with numerous improvements. Linux kernel 4.9.15 LTS is half of the previous update, and according to the appended shortlog, it changes a total of 82 files, with 690 insertions and 342 deletions.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.9.15 kernel. All users of the 4.9 kernel series must upgrade. The updated 4.9.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.9.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 GPU drivers, networking improvements

Among the changes included in the Linux 4.9.15 LTS kernel patch, we can notice that about half or more are updated drivers, mostly for GPU drivers like AMDGPU, Intel i915, IMX, and vmwgfx, but also for things like InfiniBand, Bluetooth, ACPI, HV, NVDIMM, s390, PWM, PCI, TTY, and networking ones like Broadcom brcm80211 wireless and Marvell mvpp2 Ethernet.

There are also various improvements to the autofs4, AFS, Ceph, CIFS, debugfs, FAT, NFS, and OrangeFS filesystems, as well as the s390, x86, and Xtensa hardware architectures. The networking stack was also changed, but only with various fixes for the mac80211 wireless framework, and the usual core kernel and mm improvements are present in this maintenance update to the Linux 4.9 kernel branch.

If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.9 kernel series, you are urged to update to the Linux kernel 4.9.15 LTS patch as soon as possible, or as soon as it lands in the stable software repositories of your operating system. The source tarball is available for download right now from kernel.org or via our website if you fancy compiling it from sources.