After much anticipation, Linus Torvalds has finally announced the release of Linux 4.8. The new kernel received as many as eight Release Candidate (RC) builds ahead of its formal launch.
Torvalds had delivered the RC8 last week that emerged as the last Release Candidate of the latest Linux kernel. It brought some random and minor fixes for early adopters and included several updated drivers to support new some new hardware.
Notably, the success of the last Release Candidate enabled Linux 4.8 kernel series to reach various open source distributions. Canonical’s Ubuntu 16.10 final beta already got the latest kernel, while other popular variants such as Arch Linux and OpenSUSE would receive the new experience in the coming days.
In terms of hardware compatibility, Linux will now support not just for desktops, notebooks and mobile devices but also some advanced computing models like the touchscreen Microsoft Surface 3.
Merge window for 4.9 now opened
46-year-old Torvalds stated that the launch of the newest kernel opened the merge window for 4.9. “This obviously means that the merge window for 4.9 is open, and I appreciate the people who already sent in some pull requests early due to upcoming travel or other reasons,” he said while announcing the new kernel version.
Developers can access the official kernel website to download the Linux 4.8 sources. The kernel includes stable experience for devices based on ARM, MIPS, SPARC and x86 platforms.
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