Kernel release status

[Posted September 7, 2017 by corbet]

The 4.13 kernel is out, released on September 3. Headline features in this release include kernel hardening via structure layout randomization, native TLS protocol support, better huge-page swapping, improved handling of writeback errors, better asynchronous I/O support, better power management via next-interrupt prediction, the elimination of the DocBook toolchain for formatted documentation, and more. There is one other change that is called out explicitly in the announcement: "The change in question is simply changing the default cifs behavior: instead of defaulting to SMB 1.0 (which you really should not use: just google for 'stop using SMB1' or similar), the default cifs mount now defaults to a rather more modern SMB 3.0."

The 4.14 merge window is open; just over 6,200 changesets have been merged as of this writing. Our first merge-window summary will appear around September 11.

Stable updates: 4.9.47, 4.4.86, and 3.18.69 were released on September 2, followed by 4.12.11, 4.9.48, 4.4.87, and 3.18.70 on September 7.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has reiterated that 4.14 will (probably) be the next kernel release to receive long-term stable maintenance.