Just a few moments ago, Ben Hutchings, the maintainer of the long-term supported Linux 3.2 kernel series, has had the pleasure of informing Linux users about the immediate availability for download of Linux kernel 3.2.72 LTS.

Looking at the attached diff from the previous maintenance release, Linux kernel 3.2.71 LTS, we can notice a host of improvements in various areas. For example, there are many changes to the x86 hardware architecture, small enhancements to the PowerPC (PPC), ARM, MIPS, PA-RISC, Sparc, and s390 architectures, and some sound changes.

Additionally, Linux kernel 3.2.72 LTS contains a great number of networking fixes, especially for things like IPv6, IPv4, mac80211, Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), SUNRPC, and Transparent Inter-process Communication (TIPC), along with improvements to the EXT4, GFS2, Btrfs, Ceph, CIFS, eCryptfs, HFS, HFS+, HostFS, JBD2, NFS, OCFS2, and XFS filesystems.

"I'm announcing the release of the 3.2.72 kernel. All users of the 3.2 kernel series should upgrade," says Ben Hutchings. "The updated 3.2.y git tree can be found at: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-3.2.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git."

Many drivers have been updated

In addition to the filesystem, networking, sound, and architecture improvements, Linux kernel 3.2.72 LTS also updates numerous drivers, especially for things like Crypto, GPU (mostly Intel i915 and Radeon), InfiniBand, MD, networking, PCI, SCSI, SPI, TTY, USB, and Xen.

If you're running a GNU/Linux distribution powered by a kernel from the Linux 3.2 LTS series, you are urged to update to Linux kernel 3.2.72 LTS as soon as possible. We're also urging distribution vendors to update the kernel packages of their OSes immediately. You can download Linux kernel 3.2.72 LTS right now from Softpedia or via the kernel.org website.