Linus Torvalds announces Linux kernel 4.2

Aug 30, 2015 20:08 GMT  ·  By

After eight Release Candidate builds, just a few minutes ago, Linus Torvalds announced the release and immediate availability for download of the final version of Linux kernel 4.2.

We remind you that Linux kernel 4.2 is one of the biggest kernels in recent times, as Mr. Torvalds wrote back when the first RC version was announced. It introduces all sorts of interesting things, such as rewrites of Intel Assembly x86 code, support for a new ARM board, F2FS per-file encryption, NCQ TRIM handling, Jitter RNG improvements, an all-new AMD GPU driver, queue spinlocks, and many other updated drivers and performance improvements.

"So judging by how little happened this week, it wouldn't have been a mistake to release 4.2 last week after all, but hey, there's certainly a few fixes here, and it's not like delaying 4.2 for a week should have caused any problems either," says Linus Torvalds. "So here it is, and the merge window for 4.3 is now open. I already have a few pending early pull requests, but as usual I'll start processing them tomorrow and give the release some time to actually sit."

Linux kernel 4.2 now ready for download

As usual, you can download the Linux kernel 4.2 sources right now via Softpedia or from the kernel.org website and start compiling it on your GNU/Linux distribution, but only if you know how to do it. If not, we strongly recommend that you wait for your operating system's vendor to upgrade the kernel packages to version 4.2, which might take a few weeks or even months.

Of course, we also urge all maintainers of Linux kernel-based operating systems to download the latest Linux 4.2 kernel announced today and try to compile, test, and ultimately upgrade the current kernel packages of their distributions to the new version, which brings support for new hardware components and promises to offer a more reliable and secure system.