Linus Torvalds finally announced Linux Kernel 3.12. Here’re the new features and how to install / upgrade to Kernel 3.12 in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10 and Linux Mint.

Linus Torvalds wrote on the mailing list (read the announcement):

I was vacillating whether to do an rc8 or just cut the final 3.12, but

since the biggest reason to *not* do a final release was not so much

the state of the code, as simply the fact that I’ll be traveling with

very bad internet connection next week, I didn’t really want to delay

the release. Sure, we had a number of driver reverts, and there was an

annoying auto-NUMA memory corruption fix series, but none of it was

really worth delaying 3.12 for. But the fact that I’m going to be (effectively) off-line next week

means that I’m *not* opening the merge window for 3.13 yet … …

What’s New in Linux Kernel 3.12:

The Radeon open-source kernel graphics driver has improved Dynamic Power Management, but it won’t be until Linux 3.13 where Radeon DPM is enabled by default along with HDMI audio.

A brand new DRM/KMS driver in the form of the Snapdragon MSM driver written by Rob Clark to go along with his reverse-engineered Freedreno driver for Qualcomm Snapdragon/Adreno graphics.

Run-time GPU power management so NVIDIA Optimus systems can dynamically power on/off the secondary GPU.

Experimental DRM render nodes support done by David Herrmann over the summer.

AMD Berlin APU support as the first APU built upon AMD’s Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA).

The EXT4 file-system now supports aggressive extent caching and better recovery capabilities.

Random F2FS, XFS, and Btrfs file-system improvements. This kernel does deliver on disk improvements.

zRAM has been promoted out of the staging area of the kernel. ZRAM supports a compressed block device in RAM to avoid paging to disk and is mostly of benefit for systems with limited amounts of system memory.

Various staging driver updates and sound driver work and other glorious work.

Install / Upgrade Linux Kernel 3.12

The DEBs for Linux Kernel 3.12 has been made into kernel-ppa. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and follow the steps below to download and install them.

1. Download DEBs for this kernel:

For 32-bit Ubuntu, Linux Mint and alternatives run commands below one by one:

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-headers-3.12.0-031200-generic_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_i386.deb wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-headers-3.12.0-031200_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_all.deb wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-image-3.12.0-031200-generic_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_i386.deb

For 64-bit Ubuntu, Linux Mint and alternatives run commands below one by one:

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-headers-3.12.0-031200-generic_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_amd64.deb wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-headers-3.12.0-031200_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_all.deb wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.12-saucy/linux-image-3.12.0-031200-generic_3.12.0-031200.201311031935_amd64.deb

2. For both 32-bit & 64-bit install the Kernel via:

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.12.0-*.deb linux-image-3.12.0-*.deb

Once installed, restart your computer and done.

If for some reason the new kernel does not work properly, run command below to remove Linux Kernel 3.12:

sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.12.0-* linux-headers-3.12.0-*