Renowned kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman reported at the end of January on the release and immediate availability for download of the ninety-sixth maintenance build of the Linux 3.10 long-term supported kernel series.

Looking at the appended shortlog for Linux 3.10.96, we can notice that the new point release changes a total of 56 files, with 333 insertions and 153 deletions, bringing various improvements to the PowerPC (PPC), x86, ARM64 (AArch64), OpenRISC, and MN10300 hardware architectures. It also comes with updates to USB, Xen, and networking drivers, lot of sound enhancements, as well as an updated networking stack.

"I'm announcing the release of the 3.10.96 kernel. All users of the 3.10 kernel series must upgrade," said Greg Kroah-Hartman in the release notes. "The updated 3.10.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.10.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."

Users need to update as soon as possible

Linux kernel 3.10.96 LTS might not look like much, but it fixes important issues and adds much-needed improvements to the long-term supported kernel. You'll thus need to update your Linux kernel-based operating system to this new maintenance release as soon as possible or as soon as it arrives in the default software repositories of your distribution.

Of course, we're urging OS vendors to grab the new version, compile it and push it to the main stable channels of their operating systems for users to upgrade. You can download the Linux kernel 3.10.96 LTS sources right now via Softpedia or directly from the kernel.org website, whichever suits you best.