EOL was reached with the release of the 4.12.14 kernel

Sep 20, 2017 13:50 GMT  ·  By

Greg Kroah-Hartman published on Wednesday new maintenance updates for various of the supported Linux kernel branches that he maintains, including the Linux 4.12 series, which appears to have reached end of life.

The Linux 4.12.4 point release is now available for all users using the Linux 4.12 kernel series, but it seems that this is the last maintenance update to be issued for this branch, which is now marked as EOL (End of Life) on the kernel.org website and will no longer receive support.

Therefore, all users using the Linux 4.12 kernel series are urged to upgrade to a newer kernel branch, such as Linux 4.13, which received its third maintenance update today. Of course, you can also choose to update to Linux kernel 4.12.4, but keep in mind that it's the last patch.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.12.14 kernel. All users of the 4.12 kernel series must upgrade. Note, the 4.12.y kernel series is now end-of-life, there will not be any more updates. Please move to 4.13.y at this point in time," said Greg Kroah-Hartman in the mailing list announcement.

Linux kernel 4.9.51 LTS also released with improvements

If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.12 series, please consider upgrading to the Linux 4.13 kernel as soon as possible. If you don't know how to compile your own kernel, you should ask your distro's maintainer to upgrade the kernel packages to Linux 4.13.

Linux 4.13 is the latest stable and most advanced kernel series, released two weeks ago with numerous new features and improvements. Unfortunately, it's also not a short-lived branch, so you're better off waiting for the next LTS version, Linux 4.14, whose development was kicked off by Linus Torvalds last weekend.

Besides announcing the release of the Linux 4.12.4 and 4.13.3 kernels, renowned kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman also published today a new maintenance update to the long-term supported Linux 4.9 series, versioned 4.9.51, which available for download from the kernel.org website.