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s planned, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has officially released the Linux 4.8 kernel after the eight Release Candidate. This means that you can visit the Linux kernel website and download the latest version. Interestingly, Linus codenamed 4.8.0 kernel as “Psychotic Stoned Sheep.”

In his announcement post, Linus mentions that last Release Candidate didn’t come with much changes. “which maybe means that I could probably just have skipped rc8 after all. Oh well, no real harm done,” he adds.

Before going ahead and listing the best features of Linux 4.8 kernel, let me remind you that the merge window for 4.9 kernel is open. Linus plans to pull the requests right away and finalize the next release. For those who don’t know, Linux 4.9 kernel is the next LTS kernel branch.

10 Best features of Linux 4.8 kernel

The release announcement summarizes the notable changes since the rc8 as a mix of arch fixes, drivers, and generic code. Below is the list of the best features of the Linux 4.8 kernel release:

AMDGPU OverDrive support for overclocking AMD graphic cards NVIDIA Pascal support, which includes only initial support Raspberry Pi 3 SoC supported by mainline kernel ACPI Low-Power Idle support HDMI CEC support after years of development Btrfs ENOSPC improvement Hardened usercopy protection ASLR for kernel memory sections Microsoft Surface 3 touch support Intel Virtual Button driver for Skylake laptops

Users can download the latest Linux 4.8 kernel from the kernel.org website. Read the release announcement here

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