It's official: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will feature the kernel Linux 4.4LTS. Since yesterday, February 1, 2016, the new version of the Linux kernel can be used with Ubuntu. Canonical uploaded the latest stable version of the kernel packages to the repositories of the distro that will arrive next April, so that users who like to try new things can already start adopting it.
As our colleagues at Linux Addicts already said, the kernel 4.4 LTS comes with many new features. In case you don't remember what they are, let's do a quick review:
- Support for AMD Stoney, the next APUs released by AMD.
- Numerous enhancements and additions that positively affect AMD GPUs like the Carrizo, Tonga and Fiji. Although there is not yet support for power management for discrete cards, there will be patches for this in the Linux 4.5 kernel.
- Raspberry Pi KMS Driver which has been included thanks to the work of Eric Anholt of Broadcom, although it does not yet handle 3D hardware acceleration, but it is already being worked on.
- The Nouveau controllers also bring improvements stability for NVIDIA GPUs, but nothing remarkable. There are also some other improvements for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 SoCs graphics, and Intel's graphics chips, especially for the Skylake and Broxton.
- Updates for 64-bit ARMs and EFI enhancements for these architectures. There are also improvements for some ARM-based SoCs platforms.
- Many changes in terms of networks. One of them is support for Realtek RTL8xxxU WiFi cards, support for Very High Throughput MESH in the Atheros ATH10K, VRF support on the IPv6 stack, support for eBPF non-root programs and other improvements in terms of maps and programs with eBPF , etc.
Things do not stay in what we have just told, since the Ubuntu Kernel Team in Canonical is closely following the development cycle of this extended soprote core, which received its first maintenance release a couple of days ago. This brought users the latest technologies from the kernel as they are released.