A few moments ago, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of Linux kernel 4.8.14, the fourteenth maintenance update to the most advanced kernel series.
Believe it or not, Linux kernel 4.8.14 is here only two days after the December 8 release of Linux kernel 4.8.13, which wasn’t a big patch. However, it looks like today’s update brings some more improvements, and according to the appended short leg and the diff since the previous version, it changes a total of 56 files, with 388 insertions and 164 deletions.
“Turns out I’m going to be on a very long flight early tomorrow morning, so I figured it would be good to get this kernel out now, instead of delaying it by an extra day. So, I’m announcing the release of the 4.8.14 kernel,” said Greg Kroah-Hartman in today’s mailing list announcement. “All users of the 4.8 kernel series must upgrade.”
Linux kernel 4.8.14 is all about networking improvements, as it updates the networking stack with a bunch of changes and fixes to the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP), Distributed Switch Architecture (DSA), IPv4, IPv6, Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), Netlink, packet scheduler, and Transparent Interprocess Communication (TIPC) implementations.
Additionally, there are various enhancements to the Broadcom, Cadence, Marvell, and Renesas Ethernet network controller drivers, as well as to the Broadcom support for the Distributed Switch Architecture (DSA) subsystem. Last but not least, Linux kernel 4.8.14 fixes a couple of issues with the SPARC hardware architecture. As usual, you are urged to update your kernel packages as soon as possible.
Linux kernel 4.8.14 is now available for download from kernel.org or via our web portal. Also today, Greg Kroah-Hartman released the thirty-eighth maintenance update to the long-term supported Linux 4.4 kernel series, so if you’re using a GNU/Linux distribution powered by that kernel, you are urged to update as soon as possible to Linux kernel 4.4.38 LTS.
