Linux Kernel 5.9 Gets First Point Release, It’s Now Marked as “Stable”

Linux Kernel 5.9 Stable

The latest Linux 5.9 kernel series received its first point release, which also marks the branch as “stable” on the kernel.org website and therefore ready for mass adoption.

Released last weekend, the Linux kernel 5.9 series introduces numerous new features and improvements, such as support for the Unicore architecture, support for the x86 FSGSBASE instructions, Zstandard (Zsdt) compression support for building x86 kernels, and support for extended attributes for NFS 4.2 clients.

It also brings a new rescue= mount option and various performance improvements for the Btrfs file system, full support for asynchronous buffered read operations in the io_uring subsystem, improved management of anonymous memory, capacity awareness for the deadline scheduler, and a new sysctl knob.

Of course, Linux kernel 5.9 also ships with lots of new and updated drivers to support newer hardware. Therefore, it is highly recommended to be used on machines where older kernel versions do not offer support for the respective hardware components.

Announced today by Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel 5.9.1 is here as the first point release in the series, also marking the Linux 5.9 branch as “stable” on the kernel.org website, from where you can download the source tarball if you fancy compiling your own kernel or you’re a Linux OS maintainer.

This is a small bugfix release that includes a total of 19 changes, with 119 insertions and 64 deletions. Besides the bug fixes, Linux kernel 5.9.1 also adds Telit FT980-KS composition, support for FreeCalypso JTAG+UART adapters, device-id for the HP GC device, and Cellient MPL200 card option.

Linux OS vendors are recommended to upgrade to the Linux 5.9 kernel series as soon as possible, especially if they’re using a kernel that’s no longer supported. At the moment, no mainstream distribution is running Linux 5.9, but Arch Linux could be the first since the kernel is already in its Testing repositories.

Last updated 3 years ago

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