Immediately after announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.6.5, renowned kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman published details about the sixteenth maintenance update for the long-term supported Linux 4.4 kernel series.

Linux 4.4 is currently the most advanced LTS (Long Term Support) kernel branch, and it is being used by numerous GNU/Linux operating systems keen on offering their users thoroughly tested kernel packages that receive security updates and new features for a couple of years. Among these, we can mention Arch Linux, Solus, and Ubuntu Linux.

Today's update, Linux kernel 4.4.16 LTS, is an important one as it changes a total of 156 files, with 1,475 insertions and 845 deletions. Therefore, we're urging all users of a GNU/Linux operating system powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.4 LTS series to update their installations as soon as possible. Solus users are the first to get Linux kernel 4.4.16 LTS thanks to the hard work of project leader Ikey Doherty.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.4.16 kernel. All users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.4.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.4.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git;a=summary."

What's new in Linux kernel 4.4.16 LTS

Release highlights of Linux kernel 4.4.16 LTS include various improvements to ARM, AArch64 (ARM 64-bit), ARC, MIPS, x86, PowerPC (PPC), and s390 hardware architectures, updates to gpio, EDAC, IOMMU, crypto, HID, iiO, InfiniBand, MTD, SCSI, thermal, TTY, USB, virtio, Xen, hwmon, and GPU (mostly Intel i915, Nouveau, AMDGPU, AMDKFD, and vmwgfx) drivers.

Additionally, there are enhancements to the Btrfs, CIFS, NFS, OverlayFS, and UBIFS filesystems, networking stack updates, in particular for things like the mac80211 wireless framework, IPv6 and SunRPC protocols, as well as the packet scheduler, new sound stack fixes, a KVM patch, and many core kernel and mm improvements.

Download Linux kernel 4.4.16 LTS right now via our website or from kernel.org.