Linux 4.20 released with new features

Linux 4.20, the latest version of Linux Kernel, has been released just before the holiday break, a move which definitely will be cheered by the Linux community.

The announcement was made by Linux Torvalds in a mailing list on Sunday.

Linus Torvalds, who is credited as the creator of Linux kernel, stated in the announcement, that there was no reason to delay the release until after the holidays. Full excerpt from the statement below.

Let’s face it, last week wasn’t quite as quiet as I would have hoped
for, but there really doesn’t seem to be any point to delay 4.20
because everybody is already taking a break.

And it’s not like there are any known issues, it’s just that the
shortlog below is a bit longer than I would have wished for. Nothing
screams “oh, that’s scary”, though.

And as part of the “everybody is already taking a break”, I can
happily report that I already have quite a few early pull requests in
my inbox. I encouraged people to get it over and done with, so that
people can just relax over the year-end holidays. In fact, I probably
won’t start pulling for a couple of days, but otherwise let’s just try
to keep to the normal merge window schedule, even if most people
hopefully won’t even be back until over the merge window is over.

As to the details of this last week of 4.20 – most of it is networking
(drivers, core networking fixes, bpf). There’s a few other non-network
driver updates too, and a revert series of some of the x86 inline asm
changes that were obviated by upcoming compiler support.

Details below.

Have a Merry Christmas or other holiday of your choice.

Linus

Linus Torvalds, Creator, and principle developer of Linux Kernel

What changed in Linux 4.20?

Accordingly to the announcement, not much. It includes several updates to network drivers, some non-network updates, reverts of some x86 inline asm, etc.

Where can I download the latest Linux Kernel?

The latest Linux 4.20 kernel can be downloaded here.